1916 | Bryant: Habits and Food of the Roadrunner 47 
total food was made up of animal matter and that slightly less than 
10 per cent was of vegetable material. Nearly all of the vegetable 
matter was of one kind, the fruit and seeds of the sour-berry (Rhus 
integrifolia). Insects and certain vertebrates composed the animal 
food. Chief among the insects found were beetles (18.2 per cent), 
grasshoppers and crickets (36.82 per cent), cutworms and cater- 
pillars (7 per cent), cicadas and other hemipterous insects (5 per 
cent), ants, bees, and wasps (4.24 per cent), and scorpions (3.67 
per cent). Lizards of three species (3.73 per cent), two birds (1.56 
per cent), one tiny cottontail rabbit (1.0 per cent), and two wild mice 
of two different species (2.38 per cent) composed the vertebrate food. 
The results of stomach examinations substantiated rather than 
altered published statements regarding the food of the roadrunner. 
From published sources, however, came added information as to the 
number of snakes and lizards consumed by this bird and practically 
all of the information regarding its bird-eating habits. One hzard, 
the whip-tailed lizard (Cnemidophorus), appears to be taken more 
often than any other species. 
The individual capacity for food in this bird is great, for an 
average full stomach contains about ten cubic centimeters of food. 
The collective capacity, however, is small, due to the paucity of indi- 
viduals. The amount of damage possible (and this must be said also 
of the potential good) is greatly minimized because there is no con- 
centration of individuals in any one place. A wide variety of food 
items from small insects to reptiles and mammals is consumed. 
Little evidence was obtained that the roadrunner is detrimental 
to man’s interests. The destruction of a few beneficial insects and 
birds, and of certain lizards usually considered beneficial, can alone 
be taken as evidence against it. Even if the consumption of a certain 
proportion of all of the above as food be a fixed habit, the end result 
is minimized when the facts are taken into consideration that the 
roadrunner is a bird of the desert regions rather than of the cultivated 
fields and that the species exists in but small numbers. 
A preponderance of evidence favors the bird. The destruction of 
such unquestioned pests as grasshoppers, cutworms, caterpillars, and 
wireworms, and of such rodents as mice is to be desired even if the 
amount of destruction be relatively small. The taking of this sort 
of food on wild land is evidence that this bird when feeding in 
cultivated fields is likely to be distinctly beneficial. 
Evidently the roadrunner never turns its attention to any sort 
