Aroadrunner just like this one hangs around our neighborhood and last week he or she searched our patio thoroughly for something to eat. No luck this time but last spring he found a turtle dove’s nest which was promptly raided for the eggs. They are pretty fierce predators.
I’m actually just testing to see how my new Yahoo! Premier Photo service, which allows public access, works.
Beep beep!
Hey, David, whereabouts do you live? We recently moved a thousand feet higher from Albuquerque and we never see any roadrunners up here, even in the summer when there were lizards aplenty. I kinda miss them.
California desert, elevation about 2500 ft. Albuquerque is about 4000 isn’t it? So you would be 5000? I don’t find any info on the effect of altitude in Britannica (on CD). Maybe some ornithologist will check in.
Watch out for Coyotes. And if you get any boxes from the Acme corporation, send them back!
Spooky, are you high enough to be into a shrub/tree zone? I’m guessing that the roadrunners wouldn’t live in that habitat because there’s too much visual obstruction, so they’d be more vulnerable to predators.
I’m in Las Cruces, at around 3,800 feet, and see them in the parking lot on occasion. I’ve never seen them up on the mesas, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.
When I lived in Tucson, we saw them all the time. They don’t look like the ones on the cartoon, and they don’t say “meep meep” either 
I live in a small town just north of Austin, and we’ve got… a turkey. Yep, a gobbler, living in our front yard. It’s kinda cool… but he certainly made himself scarce during Thanksgiving.
Roadrunners are plentiful here in the low desert (Palm Springs area). Even with all the development going on, they seem to pop up just about anywhere.
The other day I was up in the hills, in a residential area above Palm Desert, and I was virtually face to face with a bighorn sheep.
They still wander down occasionally, although there has been a big project to fence them in and keep them safe.
My least favorite desert dweller is the coyote. Yech. Oh, and the ducks who migrate here and poop in the pool. Nasty stuff.
I used to work in San Bernardino. There was a roadrunner that came to our parking area most mornings. It would find a snail in the bushes and carry it over to a curb. With the snail in its beak, it would bash the snail against the curb until the shell broke and it had a nice snack.
It never did learn how to prepare the snail with butter and garlic.
So it wasn’t a coureur de la route?
fizgig, when I was in Las Cruces two years ago, I stayed with a former boss. His house is in a relatively new development. Each night, he had roadrunner roost on his porch light. In the morning, when it was pretty well light, the roadrunner would hop off the fixture and run off down the road (how else?). What a neat light ornament for an ornithologist! I have a picture of it roosting somewhere…
David, I did a small roadrunner study mumble years ago and from what I remember in the literature, roadrunner tended not to be found over 2200 m. That seems pretty high to me, but perhaps that applies to southerly populations. When I’ve seen them, it was mostly in high deserts (and porch lights), but toward the valley floors.
Even worse, the real Tasmanian devils don’t look a thing like the cartoon one.:eek:
There’s an entire family of turkey’s in my neighborhood. One of the neighbors apparently puts out some food for them every now and then, and thus they’ve taken to stayin in the area year in year out. And they are rarely alone - normally I see 2 or 3 together, but on rare occasions, I’ve seen as many as 10!
One day I driving back from work, I had to stop a few yards from home as one of the turkeys was in the middle of the road. It then ran off after I came to a stop, and was then followed by about 10 little chicks. 
Another day, I let my daschund outside and she immediately bolted down the hill in my front yard out of sight. Thinking she was chasing yet another squirrel, I go back inside and look out one of the windows. I see my dog running back up and across the house; next thing I see is a turkey running up the hill with wings spread chasing my dog! :eek:
David Simmons: I’ve been whooshed.
The French quote seems to translate to “roadrunner”, so I would guess he was asking you that it wasn’t a French version of the species, judging by its culinary preference.
Aha. I translated coureur de la route as “runner of the road”. I thought, “Erm… Yes it is a roadrunner!” I didn’t make the connection that a French roadrunner would know how to prepare snails.
In my defense, I haven’t even finished my first cuppa joe yet. :o
BTW Ferret Herder, I voted for the candidate for Lt. Governor whose occupation was listed as “Ferret Legalization Coordinator”. (He didn’t win, so I guess ferrets will remain illegal here.)
Um, I found the porch light roosting roadrunner.
I thought it was pretty cool.
I love my coyote! I hug him and squeeze him and kiss his little purple nose. He always has the biggest, most enthusiastic grin on his face, and he never gets mean, even when he falls off the couch head first.
(Did I mention that he’s a stuffed toy from last winter’s Olympics in Salt Lake?)
Johnny L.A. - yeah, that’s just a silly law; it’s hard to believe they’re too “exotic” or “wild” to be a pet in CA. The little things can’t even survive on their own. Maybe someday that’ll get overturned.
brachyrhynchos - I thought it was cute. I can just imagine the little guy getting up in the morning and running off down the road… though I can’t get the thought out of my head of him saying “meep meep” and planning to torment a coyote for his day’s work. 
