roadrunners

Occasionally, as we are driving, we see a roadrunner dash across the road or in and out of the nearby scrub. We don't see them very often, but when we do, they are running pretty quickly. Roadrunners are a pretty large bird and they are fast runners.(click on the red sentence to read more).They are the state bird of New Mexico and while living there, we would see them once in a while too. And of course I grew up watching the cute cartoon roadrunner, beep beep, always outrunning the crazy coyote. However, I really never appreciated their creepy prehistoric appearance until yesterday.

Meet one of the two roadrunners we had in the backyard yesterday morning. A surprise because this was the first time we have seen these anywhere near our house.

He was sitting on this vintage barbecue grill that is on our patio. I was inside typing yesterday's birthday blog when Rachel came running in looking for the camera. She and I were planning to go swimming and she had started to head out there when she saw that guy perched on the grill. Long pointy beak, gangly legs and beady eyes. He was pretty interested in the far side of the yard and soon hopped down and scurried along the side of the pool.
There were two of them. Both on a quick mission, running I assumed, to get out of the yard since she was out there snapping pictures. If you clicked on the highlighted sentence above, you will have read that they are not often birds of flight, but I will say they seem a bit flighty as they dash around at top speed.
So... zoom...within a quick minute they were both over in the far side of the yard. As they were running and darting, they were making a funny noise that we found interesting. If you click here, and scroll down to the spot labeled 'vocalization', there is an audio bar that you can click on to hear the exact noise they were making. Interesting.
Then, as one was on the ground, the other hopped/flew up to the brick column of the fence. Next, they flew over to the oleander bushes that line the side yard. That is when a lot of chirping started.
The two roadrunners worked up a commotion in the bushes. We saw that there were a couple of cardinals in the bushes too. I commented, "I hope this isn't like the ruckus of the hawks who were trying to steal the baby owls in the palm tree." As the roadrunners made their way up and over the fence and out of our yard, we noticed some more red movement in the oleander bush. The two cardinals that we had in a rose bush last month were flitting around. I never reported that a couple of days after we discovered the rose bush nest , we noticed that something had gotten to the nest and had "stolen" the two little eggs. Once again, saddening me and causing me to wonder how birds ever survive the harsh cycle of wildlife. I have seen the cardinals flying around once in a while, but not very often. As we watched closer, we could see a few little baby cardinals flitting around in the bushes too! Cute!! It looks like they had found a safer place to nest and hatch their eggs. Rachel was only able to catch this photo of the male, as the others were too quick. And soon, they all flew off.

So, after our wildlife photo session, Rachel went in to the pool as I went back to my desk to finish my birthday blogging. Our wildlife event was over... or so I thought.

As I was sitting at my desk, I heard some chirping and squawking behind me on the patio. I turned around and on the other side of the sliding glass door, turmoil was breaking loose. The two adult cardinals were about three feet above the ground, circling and diving, chirping and screaming... and below them, standing on the patio about to take off was the roadrunner. He leaped up and over the fence with the cardinals swooping and circling, making all kinds of distressing noise... because clasped in his long pointy beak was a little red cardinal baby!

Oh no!

In the amount of time it took me to turn my head and stand up it was over. Stolen. The big creepy roadrunner was actually hunting for a meal? Ughh.

Just awful!

post edit: both the Reptile Wrangler(and he should know) and Rachel said that the roadrunner reminded them of a velociraptor from the dinosaur days. Well, I just looked it up and the word velociraptor is greek for "speedy thief". Umm, okay, that makes sense.