38 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



That the roadrunner has at times been known as the churca we 

 learn from an interesting note by Elliott Coues (1900) who quotes 

 from an anonj^mous Franciscan priest the following description, pub- 

 lished in 1790: "The Churca is a kind of pheasant which has a long 

 bill, dark plumage, a handsome tail and four feet. It has these latter 

 facing outward in such fashion that when it runs it leaves the track of 

 two feet going forward and two going backward." 



Coues himself calls attention to the fact that the word "toes" must 

 replace the word "feet" in the above paragraph if the description is to 

 fit the roadrunner. The error may well have been the translator's. 

 At any rate, anyone who has observed a roadrunner's tracks in the 

 sand knows how faithfully these record the zj^godactylism of the 

 bird's foot. 



Many a fanciful tale is told of the roadrunner. According to the 

 best known of these, the bird builds a fence of cactus spines about a 

 sleeping rattler, letting the doomed reptile buffet itself to weariness 

 until finally, in desperation, it is impaled on the spines or bites itself 

 to death ! According to other stories (some of which probably have a 

 grain of truth in them), the bird will deliberately race the swiftest 

 horse across the plains ! 



The speed of the roadrunner is remarkable. Not when he is flying 

 — a flying roadrunner is as much out of his element as a swimming 

 chicken — ^but when he is afoot. A. W. Anthony (1892) tells us of a 

 pair of birds that apparently enjoyed being chased by a hound that 

 could never catch them. He says : 



At Hatchita [New Mexico] a pair came regularly to one of the mines for 

 water, a small pool having been formed near the shaft, from the pumps. The 

 visit was made at nearly the same hour each forenoon, and was eagerly looked 

 forward to by a foxhound owned by one of the workmen. The dog never failed 

 to give chase as soon as the birds were sighted, and the race was as much 

 enjoyed by the birds as by the dog ; they seemed to have no difficulty whatever 

 in keeping well out of danger without taking wing, and usually found time 

 during the chase to stop at the water hole and get their daily drink, after 

 which they quickly disappeared. 



H. C. Bryant (1916) quotes from Heermann that the roadrunner 

 "may, however, be overtaken when followed on horseback over the 

 vast open plains," and Heermann is known to have seen "one cap- 

 tured by a couple of dogs." 



Kichard Hunt (1920), who was able to check with a speedometer 

 the actual speed of a roadrunner encountered "en route from Soledad 

 to the Galiban Range" in California, writes: "At the top speed to 

 which we provoked our victim, the famous runner was moving at 

 the tremendous rate of 10 miles an hour on a practically level piece 

 of road." 



