Once a fellow called me to report seeing a hen pheasant down on the Arkansas-Missouri border. I knew exactly what he had seen. I had just seen something similar… a road-runner.
About twenty years ago I saw a road-runner up here on Lightnin’ Ridge about forty yards from my back door. The bird, which is about the size of a hen pheasant, was running as if the cartoon coyotee was after him, but I never heard him beep. Last week I saw him or one like him again. For this part of the northern Ozarks, he is a rare bird. They are not suppose to be here, and my wooded ridge top is possibly the farthest north they have ever been seen.
But he is not a bird of woodlands. He is a desert bird found in Mexico, Texas, Arizona and western Oklahoma. I guess mine has moved up here from northern Oklahoma or maybe Arkansas. If you want to see one, there is a gravel road west of the Big Creek resort on the north side of Bull Shoals where road-runners are thick in the summer. On one day I have seen three or four crossing that road.
There isn’t a lot known about road-runners. They seldom fly and don’t get but a few feet off the ground, seldom going more than 20 yards at a time in flight. But that is how they avoid predators that are faster runners. They can’t outrun a coyote but they can elude him. The bird usually runs about 15 miles per hour but if necessary they can run 25 miles per hour. You never see one pecking around in one spot like a dove or quail.
They almost never get off the ground, except when they nest. They nest a few feet off the ground in bushes or small trees. Some nests have as few as two or three eggs, and some have up to eight. Some ornithologists say they mate for life, but I think that is unlikely. I have never seen two together.
They have a cousin, in that same cuckoo family, that we in the Ozarks call a rain-crow, or ‘yellow-billed cuckoo’. The two birds seem to have little in common, but their four toes have two pointing forward and two pointing backwards. Their track makes an X. The rain crow is common here, and is elusive in high branches of tall oaks. They stay off the ground while their cousin, the road-runner seldom leaves it.
In the desert states, road-runners have been seen killing large rattlesnakes by pecking at the head and avoiding strikes until the snake is dead. Usually that is seen involving two of the birds.
What will he eat up here on Lightnin’ Ridge in the winter? Anything he wants. There are lizards out on warm days, small mammals like field mice, and they also eat a small percentage of plant and seed matter. As a photographer, I would give a good portion of my left little toe to get a picture of a road-runner up here on this ridge-top. Wouldn’t it be something to get him running through my woods in a skiff of snow? He can live through an Ozarks winter because he never has to drink water, and doesn’t, ever. He gets all the moisture needed from his food, like many other desert small animals. He doesn’t have to eat a great deal and his body temperature drops to surprisingly low levels much like a reptile, when it gets real cold.
He can thrive if it stays above 40 degrees, but I suspect that he would be in a sort of suspended animation for periods of time under cover somewhere when freezing temperatures approach. I know darn well he and his kind do not migrate. I tried walking to Arkansas once and gave up after the first ten miles.
I wish I could help that road-runner with a feeding station of some kind, or just see him more often. A more fascinating bird I have never seen anywhere.
One last thing… deer hunters beware. If you kill a big-antlered buck, DO NOT take a game warden, who shows up later, anywhere you hunt. He will suddenly appear at your home, wanting you to take him and show him where you killed your deer and cleaned it. He’ll mysteriously find corn there or in the deer’s stomach (which comes from his pocket) and therefore charge you and confiscate your antlers, which likely are worth a good deal of money.
Not all conservation officers are crooked enough to do that, but some are. Don’t be their victim! Any time and agent shows up WITHOUT A WARRANT, tell them to leave and close the door. They have no right to your cooperation without a legal warrant, and if they get your antlers you will never see them again.. EVEN IF YOU GET A LAWYER AND ARE FOUND INNOCENT OF THE CHARGE!.
One agent in Stone County has a shed full of antlers he calls his ‘Retirement Account.’ Almost none were legally obtained! Don’t let them get yours.
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