His eye streak looks like a gas tank gauge

Is it half full or half empty?  With a vivid red streak near his eye, he caught a lizard in my garden.  He shook it in his beak until it fell to pieces.  He ate the lizard in about five bites.  Roadrunners live in mated pairs in a territory year round.   I see this guy all the time combing the area for food.  I love his feathers, so aero dynamic.  They can run up to 15 mph, usually chasing food. 

Yesterday he was running around the property and he ran up near the outside of the chicken coop.  He stopped and was looking inside.  All of the chickens were inside the coop but quickly ran outdoors to check him out.  They stood on one side of the fence looking him over and he stood on the other side looking at them.  They are about the same height.  After about one minute of gazing at each other, he resumed his roaming.   I thought it was kind of funny. 

No joke

I just heard a knock at my door and I looked out the window to find a roadrunner standing on my welcome mat.  He took off, ran down the path, and jumped up on top of my gate then turned to look back at the door.  The wild life out here is fascinating.  Just when I think I've seen it all a roadrunner plays ding dong ditchum on me. 

Roadrunners

Every once in a while I'll catch sight of a roadrunner darting across the road or my yard.  They sprint and then stop suddenly to check things out.  Roadrunnders grow up to 2 ft in length from beak to tail and up to 2.5 ft tall.  They mostly eat insects such as grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, and an occassional lizard or snake (including rattlesnakes).  They also sometimes eat rodents, tarantulas, small birds, eggs, and fruits and seeds like prickly pear cactus. Roadrunners forage on the ground and usually run after prey from under cover.  Roadrunners are commonly solitary birds but sometimes live in pairs. They are monogamous and a pair may mate for life. Roadrunners also participate in bi-parental care. Both sexes incubate the nest and feed the hatchlings, but it's the males job to incubate the nest at night. For the first one to two weeks after the young hatch, one parent always remains at the nest.   One other interesting fact:  Roadrunners are the only natural enemy to the tarantula hawk (see the tarantula hawk post earlier this month).   I took the picture below from my bedroom window before we had a chance to landscape the yard.