Roadrunners and cursorial wing use

[Accipiter <darwincr@laplaza.org>]

"paul sparks" <psparks@crosslink.net> wrote:

  >As far as I have seen in nature and the barn yard; 
  >Most of the chickens I have seen running flap 
  >their wings for whatever reason, but in the
  >wild I have never seen a quail, pheasant, 
  >or a roadrunner flap their wings when running. 
  >So I'm at a loss to see what advantage flapping
  >would do in these cases.

With regard to roadrunners, I come from where they make 'em and have had much 
opportunity to watch them at work.  For many years, we were in the habit of 
feeding meat scraps from the butchering of sheep and elk to corvids (magpies, 
ravens, crows and scrub jays, in this case), placing the scraps aloft on a 
platform we constructed for this purpose.  Each winter, a pair of roadrunners 
appeared at our house to partake of this bounty.  These predators were 
definitely a pair, for they rarely appeared alone, and they were creatures of 
habit, too, appearing almost exactly at noon each day - only during winter, 
mind.  Presumably, they returned to the lowland breeding grounds during the 
rest of the year.  

While the roadrunners initially showed up for meat scraps, we were early 
impressed when a house finch struck one of our floor-to-ceiling solar windows 
on a snowy day, and out of nowhere one of the roadrunners dashed to seize the 
stunned and fluttering bird.   The roadrunner beat the bejeezus out of the 
finch by bashing it on the ground and on a gatepost, and then swallowed the 
remnant whole, and since that incident, for all the ensuing years the 
roadrunners visited us, they watched our windows assiduously and seized any 
birds stunned thereby long before our lazy cats noticed such incidents.  They 
were quick learners, later also watching when the children took live-trapped 
mice outside the house for release, and slaying these rodents in the same 
manner as soon as they hit the ground, much to the astonishment of our 
daughters and their friends.  The clanking of the metal Havahart trap trigger 
alone would call the roadrunners into view.  

When making their swift dashes after prey, the swift and agile roadrunners 
invariably flicked their wings open to execute acute running turns, clearly 
employing the increased drag to redirect their momentum as required.  
Otherwise, the wings remained close to the body.  We often remarked upon the 
likely resemblance of these largeish birds to small coelophysids in manner and 
habit.

Behaviourally, the roadrunners displayed little fear of humans or cats, which 
latter they delighted in teasing; the birds' size and peculiar display manner 
seemed sufficient to convince the cats that these were not prey animals.  
Significantly, they seemed fully aware of the source of the meaty bounty, and 
peered through the windows and rapped loudly at the glass with their beaks when 
none was immediately forthcoming.  This habit of knocking much impressed us - 
seemed like a sort of purposeful communication, after all, and we were able to 
demonstrate this knocking to many guests.  When we appeared at the door with 
food, the roadrunners ran ahead of our feet in lockstep with one another, 
flying easily to the 7-foot meat platform and making peculiar metallic clacking 
noises while parading about waiting to be served.  Delightful animals, our own 
private dinosaurs - and, again, plainly employers of wing motion in executing 
quick running turns.  I've long been convinced that smal!
l !
feathered theropods could use feather-flicking hairpin turns to evade larger, 
heavier predators and to zero in on agile prey; I've seen 'em do it.  

John C. McLoughlin
Taos, New Mexico
USA