262 Bird - Lore 



ment more was holding up a beautiful five-foot coral-bellied racer. Koo was 

 vindicated. His warning might as easily have been for the rattlesnake found 

 later a few rods from camp. 



But it was not his potential usefulness as a camp watchman or killer of 

 'varmints' but his ready friendliness and attractive ways which attached us 

 to our rare camp visitor. If we were busy when he came he would call koo, koo, 

 and then wait for us to discover him. Sometimes we would look hard before 

 finding him and finally make him out standing on the mesquite slope above 

 us, his feathers puffed out spreading the streaks on his chest till they and his 

 light underparts toned in perfectly with the background of straw-colored 

 ground and dry weed-stalks — completely camouflaging him. It was aston- 

 ishing to see how such a large, marked bird could disappear in its background. 

 And what a contrast that round, bird-Hke form made to the grotesque 

 running figure we were familiar with — long neck, slender body, and long tail, 

 one straight line. 



When we had found him, most often standing quietly in camp waiting for 

 us, while we were getting his food ready he would come up within a few yards 

 of us and stand nervously raising and lowering his crest, and raising and 

 lowering his tail as if to be ready for instant flight, an instinctive habit he 

 partly lost when better acquainted with us. 



When there were no spare mammals in camp to appease his appetite, he 

 condescended to bits of raw beef or jack rabbit, although he greatly preferred 

 his more natural food. Once when he was standing in the trail waiting for his 

 purveyor to lower the meat-bag which, according to custom in arid, iceless 

 Arizona was hung in a tree, Koo, whether from impatience or anticipation 

 spent the time rattling his bill in the droll way he had and giving his call. 

 When food was thrown to him from any distance, the keen-eyed hunter would 

 watch it eagerly and foflow unerringly where it fefl, whether among the mes- 

 quite logs by the camp-fire or overhead among the branches of a tree. 



When a stranger came to camp while Koo was there he flattened his crest 

 and lowered his tail and scooted, racing away out of sight. But he knew us 

 and our voices. When coming into camp one noon we discovered him disap- 

 pearing up the trail, but when we caUed koo-koo in appealing tones, he turned 

 and came back in sight rattling his bill. When we kept on calling and talking 

 to him, he came walking prettily down the trail to camp making his way 

 daintily between the piles of camp-fire brush till he was so near we could see 

 his yellow eyes, when he picked up the rabbit kidney thrown him and ran up 

 the hill with it. 



When he was hungry and we were not outside, he would sometimes fly up 

 to the crotch of the mesquite by the tent where we kept his mice, or even on 

 the tent itself, when we could see his shadow on the canvas. The first time I 

 saw him trying to help himself; it had been cold and he had not been fed for a 

 day and a half, so I hurried out to him. At sight of me he gave his tail a quick 



