Mike in the Wild

My first encounter with a roadrunner in the wild was through a second floor office window on Bell Road in Phoenix.  It was over thirty years ago that the bird seemed to be proffering to its own reflection in the glass a dead lizard that was hanging from its beak .  I've since seen plenty of other roadrunners in Arizona.  Often they continued to carry prey, like the individual at the Desert Botanical Garden that held the corpse of a round-tailed ground squirrel.  Not far from it, near the park's outside café, another roadrunner amused diners as it begged for popcorn and then flicked the puffy kernels in the air in order to gulp them down. It was on the same grounds where I encountered my first roadrunner nest.  High in a tree's dense canopy, the cluster of sticks hid a single immature bird that I watched mature over several weeks.   My sightings in my back yard are probably much less frequent because a high wall surrounds it.  Roadrunners do indeed...

Spring's arrival in the Arizona desert shows itself in many ways: temperatures flirting with the nineties, innumerable cactus flowers, blooming palo verde trees, and nesting birds.   The colors of the flora are a visual delight while the warm and dry climate is usually pleasant enough for lots of outdoor activities.  But sometimes our avian friends are an affront to our hearing, especially when it interrupts our sleep. Northern mockingbirds are one of the most common birds in Phoenix's neighborhoods.  Normally their endless varieties of calls are a beautiful and melodious soundtrack to the outdoor landscape.  But in the spring their tweets seem to take on a frantic, incessant rhythm as they try to attract mates.  At one point, their songs start to puncture the calm of night, seeming to invite doves and grackles to the sleep-depriving cacophony. Nevertheless the noisy season is a celebration of life as many birds breed throughout the area.  In time ...

You don't think of roadrunners living in any environment other than the desert, and I have to admit that's  where I usually see them.  But when I started spending summers in Prescott, in an area mostly populated with ponderosa pines and various oak trees, I was surprised to see roadrunners every once in a while.  The greater roadrunner, one of two species of the fast-running avian, actually lives in a range that stretches from northern California into Colorado and almost east to the Mississippi River, in habitat not exclusive to the desert southwest and Mexico.  So next time you're looking up at the high country's acorn woodpeckers and white-breasted nuthatches, don't forget to look down along the trail for a bird that's just as comfortable on the ground as you and I are. Greater roadrunner in Prescott.   Greater roadrunner in Prescott. Greater roadrunner in Prescott. Greater roadrunner in Prescott.