i6o 



Bird - Lore 



eye. He ran, of course, but I at once 

 gained on him, and intended to use my 

 head as well as my heels. Therefore I 

 kept on the harder soil above, while he 

 ran along the bottom of a sandy wash, 

 which clearly showed that I had the 

 better of it. I did not then know that he 

 was a half-grown, inexperienced bird. 



It was a long, heart-breaking chase. 

 Once I got very near and slipped behind 

 an intervening bush. From my ambush 

 I lunged forward to grab him in my hands, 



Road-runner. If I had caught mine, the 

 accomplishment would have raised a hue 

 and cry when the word came back to 

 town. 



In our few weeks' stay in the desert, 

 the charm, the wonder of the big, open 

 earth and sky, the wide-stretching 

 bleached plains, the every-glowing, chang- 

 ing mountains, the quiet of it all, had 

 carried us with it as daily we had threaded 

 the thorny cactus over the hot sands, 

 finding bird-homes — scores of them — - 



SHE STOOD WITH CREST RAISED" 



but captured instead a joint of cactus. 

 My finger were stuck full of spines. I 

 stopped then, for I had had enough. It is 

 a trick of the Road -runner to play his 

 enemies against the cholla cactus. It is a 

 cruel trick, but all the desert is cruel. 

 Everything grows thorns, whether it be 

 plant or animal. The mesquit, the cat's- 

 claw, and the cactus, are all guarded by 

 thorns. 



We learned later that my experience 

 with the Road-runner was not an unusual 

 oue. In fact, it is the custom to lose your 



hundreds of them— in this land of little 

 rain, where life is supposed to be scant 

 and hard. 



From the first day we had been eager 

 to go out; we could not lose a day — not a 

 minute! Over the blinding plains, with 

 their bare, rattling creosote-bushes, and 

 bristling thorn-plants, flitted back and forth 

 Cactus Wrens, Bendire's and Palmer's 

 Thrashers, Verdins, and desert-loving 

 Sparrows, Warblers and Flycatchers, Gam- 

 bel's Partridges scurried under the brush. 

 In the dry creek-beds by the stunted 



