No; the bird is subject to the same dangers as the animals and the plants. Something is forever on his trail. He must always be on guard. And the food problem, ever of vital interest to bird-life, bothers him just as much as it does the coyote. There is little for him to eat and nothing for him to drink; and hardly a resting-place for the sole of his foot. Besides, it would seem as though he should be affected by the intense heat more than he is in reality. Humanity at times has difficulty in withstanding this heat, for though it is not suffocating, it parches the mouth and dries up the blood so rapidly that if water is not attainable the effect is soon apparent. The animals—that is, the wild ones—are never fazed by it; but the domestic horse, dog, and cow yield to it almost as readily as a man. And men and animals are all of low-blood temperature—a man’s normal temperature being about 98 F. But what of the bird in his coat of feathers which may add to or detract from his warmth? What is his normal temperature? It varies with the species, so far as I can ascertain by experiment, from 112 to 120 F. Consider that blood temperature in connection with a surrounding air varying from 100 to 125 F.! It would seem impossible for any life to support it. One may well wonder what strange wings beat this glowing air, what bird-life lives in this fiery waste!
Innocent-looking birds with savage instincts.
The road-runner.
Yet the desert-birds look not very different from their cousins of the woods and streams except that they are thinner, more subdued in color, somewhat more alert. They are very pretty, very innocent-looking birds. But we may be sure that living here in the desert, enduring its hardships and participating in its incessant struggle for life and for the species, they have just the same savage instincts as the plants and the animals. The sprightliness and the color may suggest harmlessness; but the eye, the beak, the claw are designed for destruction. The road-runner is one of the mildest-looking and most graceful birds of the desert, but the spring of the wild-cat to crush down a rabbit is not more fierce than the snap of the bird’s beak as he tosses a luckless lizard. He is the only thing on the desert that has the temerity to fight a rattlesnake. It is said that he kills the snake, but as to that I am not able to give evidence.
Wrens and fly-catchers.
And it is not alone the bird of prey—not alone the road-runners, the eagles, the vultures, the hawks, and the owls that are savage of mood. Every little wisp of energy that carries a bunch of feathers is endowed with the same spirit. The downward swoop of the cactus wren upon a butterfly and the snip of his little scissors bill, the dash after insects of the fly-catchers, vireos, swallows, bats, and whip-poor-wills are just as murderous in kind as the blow of the condor and the vice-like clutch of his talons as they sink into the back of a rabbit. Skill and strength in the chase are absolutely necessary in a desert where food is so scarce, and in proportion the little birds have these qualities in common with the great.
Development of special characteristics.
Birds of the air.
And naturally, as in the case of the animals, the skill and the strength develop along the line of the bird’s needs, producing that quality of character, that fitness for the work cut out for him, to which we have so often referred. There are birds that belong almost solely to the kingdom of the air—birds like the condor, the vulture, and the eagle. Upon the ground they move awkwardly, not having better feet to walk with than ducks and geese. The talons are too much developed for walking. When they rise from the ground they do it heavily and with quick flapping wings. Not until they are fairly started in the upper air do they show what wonderful wing-power they possess.
The brown-black vulture.