The burrowing owl.
This may be said of the eagles and the hawks. They hunt the desert by day, but go home to the mountains at night. The owls are somewhat different, not being given to long flight. The deep caves or wind-worn recesses under mountain ledges furnish them abiding-places. These caves also send forth at dusk a full complement of bats that seem not different from the ordinary Eastern bats. The burrowing owl is perhaps misnamed, though not misplaced. There is no evidence whatever, that I have ever seen or heard, to show that he burrows. What happens is that he crawls into some hole that is already burrowed instead of a cave or recess in the rocks. A prairie-dog or badger hole is his preference. That the place has inhabitants, including the tarantula and (it is said) the rattlesnake, does not bother the owl. He walks in with his mate and speedily makes himself at home. How the different families get on together can be imagined by one person as well as by another. They do not seem to pay any attention to each other so far as I have observed. Ordinarily the desert animals, birds, and reptiles agree to no such truce. They are at war from the start. I do not know that the owls, the bats, the night-hawks have any special equipment for carrying on their part of the war. Sometimes I have fancied they had larger eyes than is usual with their kinds outside of the desert; but I have no proof of this. Perhaps it is like the speculation as to whether the buzzard sees or scents the carrion that he discovers so readily—hardly amenable to proof.
The ground birds.
The road-runner’s swiftness.
The vicious beak.
All of the air-birds are strikingly developed in the wings and equally undeveloped in the feet, while all the ground-birds of the desert are just the reverse of this—that is, deficient in wings but strong of foot and leg. The road-runner, or as he is sometimes called the chaparralcock, is a notable instance of this. He is a lizard-eater, and in order to eat he must first catch his lizard. Now this is by no means an easy task. The ordinary gray, brown, or yellow lizard is the swiftest dodger and darter there is in the sand, and even in straight-line running he will travel too fast for an ordinary dog to catch him. His facility, too, in dashing up, over, and under bowlders is not to be underestimated. The road-runner’s task then is not an easy one, and yet he seems to accomplish it easily. There is no great effort about his pursuit and yet he generally manages to catch the lizard. It is because his legs are specially constructed for running, and his head, neck, and beak for darting. His wings are of little use. When chased by a dog he will finally take to them, but only for about fifty yards. Then he drops to the ground and starts on foot again. He will run away from a man, and sometimes even a horse cannot keep up with him. Oddly enough, he seems always to run a little sideways. The long tail (used as a rudder) is carried a little to the right or the left and gives this impression. When frightened, his top-knot is raised like that of the pheasant, and he often runs with his beak open. It is a most vicious beak for all that it looks not more blood-thirsty than that of the crow. It snaps through a scorpion or a centipede like a pair of sheep-shearers. And with all his energy and strength the road-runner weighs only about a pound. He is a long-geared bird, but not actually any larger than a pigeon.
The desert-quail.
Wings of the quail.
Travelling for water.
The blue valley-quail—whether of Arizona or California breeding—is quite as strong of leg as the road-runner, though not perhaps so swift. He does not care much about using his wings; and at best they are not better than the rather poor average of quails’ wings. By that I mean that all quails rise from cover with a great roar and bustle, and they fly very fast for a short distance; but they are soon down upon the ground, running and hiding. The flight of the quail, too, is straight ahead. It is not possible for him to rise up over five hundred feet of canyon wall, for instance, and even on an ordinary mountain side he takes several flights before he reaches the summit. The wings are not muscled like the legs, and that is because the quail is a ground-bird. He gets his food there and spends most of his time there. In the East Bob White always roosts upon the ground, but the desert-quail is usually too clever to trust himself in such an exposed place. He will travel miles to get into a cotton-wood tree at dusk, and if there is water near at hand so much the better. He dearly loves the water and the tree, but if he cannot get them he accepts the situation philosophically and goes to sleep on a high ledge of rock with water perhaps in his thought but not in his crop.