44 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The plumage worn by the young bird after it loses its natal hairs 

 is apparently the first winter plumage. Judging from such speci- 

 mens as I have seen, the postnuptial molt is the only complete molt 

 of the adult bird. Whether there is a partial prenuptial molt in 

 young or adult birds I cannot say. The roadrunner's life is so stren- 

 uous that he doubtless loses feathers frequently. Spring birds with 

 half -grown tail feathers may therefore not be performing a molt in 

 the usual sense of the word. 



Food. — Lizards (including the armored horned "toad"), small 

 snakes, scorpions, tarantulas and other spiders, centipedes and milli- 

 pedes, mice, cotton rats, ground-inhabiting small birds and their eggs 

 and young, young quail, insects of all sorts, various fruits and seeds, 

 including pricklypears : all these are eaten by the roadrunner; and 

 this considerable list but hints at the rapacity and digestive powers 

 of the gaunt bird. One of the most thorough-going reports on the 

 roadrunner's food habits is that by Dr. Harold C, Bryant (1916). 

 Informing us that animal food makes up slightly over 90 percent of 

 the total food of the species in California, Dr. Bryant says : 



Almost any animal, from the smaller rodents down to tiny insects, appears 

 to be relished by this bird. Although the stomachs examined showed no large 

 percentage of vertebrates, other published records show that reptiles sometimes 

 form a large part, if not the entire diet. Even these larger elements of food 

 are usually swallowed whole at one gulp. That the digestive apparatus is 

 powerful is evidenced by the fact that bone, hair, and feathers pass through 

 the digestive tract, and are not thrown back out through the mouth in the form 

 of pellets, as is the case with some hawks and most owls. 



A diagram in Dr. Bryant's paper makes it plain that grasshoppers 

 and crickets form a considerable part (36.82 percent) of the road- 

 runner's food in California. Beetles form 18.2 percent; and seeds 

 and fruits, cutworms and caterpillars, bugs, ants, bees, wasps, scor- 

 pions, lizards, mammals, fly larvae, birds, and "miscellaneous" items 

 go to make up the rest. 



Game officials are usually opposed to the roadrunner, for the bird 

 is reputed to be an enemy of young quail. Regarding the bird's 

 reputation as a quail destroyer, W. L. McAtee (1931) tells us that 

 "the Road-runner is persecuted almost throughout its range * * * 

 as an alleged destroyer of Quail eggs, and state bounties are even paid 

 for its destruction. Yet the Road-runner never has been known to 

 be a special enemy of Quail," and it doubtless "eats more scorpions, 

 centipedes, and tarantulas, those poisonous nuisances of the South- 

 west, than it does Quail eggs." 



Aldo Leopold (1922) writes of shooting a roadrunner "with a light- 

 colored object in his bill." Examining the spot where the bird had 

 fallen he "found a dead [quail] chick, still limber and warm but 



