184 LAND BIRDS 
doubt if there is good scientific authority for such a 
statement, and, like the rattlesnake story, it should be 
taken with a grain of allowance. 
Although so shy, these birds are very inquisitive, 
often coming close to human habitations for apparently 
no other reason than to satisfy their curiosity. A 
ranchman told me about a Road-runner that carried off 
a bright red ribbon half a yard long, which he had 
picked up in the road, running as fast as his swift legs 
could carry him with the ribbon fluttering behind him 
like a flag. Nor do I doubt this, after having seen a 
very amusing comedy played by one of these birds. The 
sole actor was a handsome cock, who was jumping back- 
ward and forward over a clump of sagebrush at least 
eight times in succession, each time leaping higher than 
before. At first I thought it was some sort of love- 
dance; but no female was in sight. Then I fancied he 
might be killing some enemy, he seemed so excited. 
But the passage of a horseman startled him, and away 
he ran on a merry race, with nothing in his beak. There 
was no trace of anything on the ground by the time I 
could cross the thirty yards’ distance to investigate. 
The usual note of the Road-runner is a modification of 
the “ kow-kow-kow ” of the yellow-billed cuckoo into a 
softer ‘‘ coo-coo-coo,” which some one has likened to the 
“coo” of a mourning dove; but this is varied by the 
chuckling notes I have heard a crow utter when talking 
to himself, and it occasionally degenerates into a cackle. 
