140 East and West 
a pair of road-runners are either nesting or 
seriously considering it, and the male disports 
himself upon a large boulder. Strutting to 
and fro upon his rock platform, he stops 
ever and anon and, bowing ceremoniously as 
to an audience below, proceeds to pump 
forth, his crested head on a level with his 
claws, a series of melancholy whining notes, 
which suggest the whine of a dog more than 
the hoot of an owl and might, at a distance, be 
mistaken for either. Day after day he ap- 
pears in the same place, sometimes silent and 
as often orating, intoning, or chanting, which- 
ever it may be, his audience a solitary female 
runner skulking somewhere in the chaparral 
and shyly taking note of these powers, to 
whom this particular bird-personality and 
these astonishing bird-manners represent the 
norm of conduct and appearance. Some- 
times he interrupts himself to descend the 
almost perpendicular side of the boulder 
with the agility of a lizard, presently reap- 
pearing to resume his antics. His diet is 
largely reptilian and he is popularly supposed 
to attack and kill the rattlesnake. 
Another bird of unconventional ways is the 
California woodpecker, who frequents the 
grove for acorns which he deposits one by one 
