One day, when riding back to the ranch, I saw half a dozen turkey buzzards soaring over the meadow—perhaps there was a dead jack-rabbit in the field. It was astonishing to see how soon the birds would discover small carrion from their great height. The ranchman never thought of burying anything, they were such good scavengers. A few hours after an animal was thrown out in the field the vultures would find it. They would stand on the body and pull it to pieces in the most revolting way. The ranchman told me he had seen them circle over a pair of fighting snakes, waiting to devour the one that was injured. They were grotesque birds. I often saw them walk with their wings held out at their sides as if cooling themselves, and the unbird-like attitude together with the horrid appearance of their red skinny heads made them seem more like harpies than before.
They were most interesting at a distance. I once saw three of them standing like black images on a granite bowlder, on top of a hill overlooking the valley. After a moment they set out and went circling in the sky. Although they flew in a group, it seemed as if the individual birds respected one another's lines so as not to cover the same ground. Sometimes when soaring they seemed to rest on the air and let themselves be borne by the wind; for they wobbled from one side to the other like a cork on rough water.
One of the most interesting birds of the valley is the road-runner or chaparral cock, 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.
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 fifteen feet high, and after strutting up and down the rock with his tail and wings hanging, stop to call, putting his bill down on the rock and going through contortions as if pumping out the sound. The lad thought his calls were answered from the brush below.
In April the ranchman reported that he had seen dusky poor-wills, relatives of our whip-poor-wills, out flycatching on the road beyond the ranch-house after dark. He had seen as many as eight or nine at once, and they had let him come within three feet of them. Accordingly, one night right after tea I started out to see them. The poor-wills choose the most beautiful part of the twenty-four hours for their activity. When I went out, the sky above the dark wall of the valley was a quiet greenish yellow, and the rosy light was fading in the north at the head of the canyon. White masses of fog pushed in from the ocean. Then the constellations dawned and brightened till the evening star shone out in her full radiant beauty. Locusts and crickets droned; bats zigzagged overhead; and suddenly from the dusty road some black objects started up, fluttered low over the barley, and dropped back on the road again. At the same time came the call of the poor-will, which, close at hand, is a soft burring poor-will, poor-wil'-low. Two or three hours later I went out again. The full moon had risen, and shone down, transforming the landscape. The road was a narrow line between silvered fields of headed grain, and the granite bowlders gleamed white on the hills inclosing the sleeping valley. For a few moments the shrill barking of coyote wolves disturbed the stillness; then again the night became silent; peace rested upon the valley, and from far up the canyon came the faint, sad cry, poor-wil'-low, poor-wil'-low.