, a grayish brown bird who stands almost as high as a crow
and has a tail as long as a magpie's. He is noted for his swiftness of
foot. Sometimes, when we were driving over the hills, a road-runner
would start out of the brush on a lonely part of the road and for quite
a distance keep ahead of the horses, although they trotted freely along.
When tired of running he would dash off into the brush, where he stopped
himself by suddenly throwing his long tail over his back. A Texan, in
talking of the bird, said, "It takes a right peart cur to catch one,"
and added that when a road-runner is chased he will rise but once, for
his main reliance is in his running, and he does not trust much to his
short wings. The chaparral cocks nested in the cactus on our hills, and
were said to live largely on lizards and horned toads.

[Illustration: Valley Quail and Road-Runner.]

It became evident that a pair of these singular birds had taken up
quarters in the chaparral on the hillside back of the ranch-house, for
one of them was often seen with the hens in the dooryard. One day I was
talking to the ranchman when the road-runner appeared. He paid no
attention to us, but went straight to the hen-house, apparently to get
cocoons. Looking between the laths, I could see him at work. He flew up
on the hen-roosts as if quite at home; he had been there before and knew
the ways of the house. He even dashed into the peak of the roof and
brought down the white cocoon balls dangling with cobweb. When he had
finished his hunt he stood in the doorway, and a pair of blackbirds lit
on the fence post over his head, looking down at him wonderingly. Was he
a new kind of hen? He was almost as big as a bantam. They sat and looked
at him, and he stood and stared at them till all three were satisfied,
when the blackbirds flew off and the road-runner walked out by the
kitchen to hunt among the buckets for food.

These curious birds seem to be of an inquiring turn of mind, and
sometimes their investigations end sadly. The windmills, which are a new
thing in this dry land, naturally stimulate their curiosity. A small boy
from the neighboring town--Escondido--told me that he had known four
road-runners to get drowned in one tank; though he corrected himself
afterwards by saying, "We fished out _one_ before he got drowned!"

Another lad told me he had seen road-runners in the nesting season call
for their mates on the hills. He had seen one stand on a bowlder fif