The Roadrunner

 This is the best time of year to walk out in my little undeveloped patch of desert by the power lines. The air is often cool and the sun provides gentle warmth instead of oppressive heat. In the mornings it is much easier to see animals in the brush.

The last couple weeks, as I walk along the dry wash towards my grove---the ironwood, the saguaro, and the palo verde, I have often seen the roadrunner that lives near the ironwood. I've seen roadrunners there at times in the past, but this one seems to be a regular inhabitant there for the time being.

I see it maybe thirty or forty feet ahead of.me on the ground. Its movements are distinctively. It hears me form far away and scampers quickly away from me in the direction I am heading, maintaining a distance. I stop and watch it for a few seconds. 

It's always pleasing to see a roadrunner. They are beautiful, much more impressive than the version one sees in cartoons.

In the last week I have followed my paternal grandfather's talent of observing animal behavior in the wild. Roadrunners, I have learned from observing, use their long balancing tail feathers as some kind of decoy. When they are standing still, on the ground or in a tree, they will slowly move their long tail slightly up and down, as if somewhere were waving a stick out of the grass.  I wonder what purpose it serves to do that.