Ricky the Roadrunner: Welcome Home!

For six years now we’ve had a couple of roadrunners (or several, hard to tell them apart) that live around Larrapin. We call him Ricky. Actually we call them all Ricky. Ricky brings little gifts of lizards, small snakes or the occasional field mouse to the front windows on a daily basis. If hunting is poor, a leaf will do as in these pics. The gift is accompanied by a tail wagging dance. Some say it’s for his reflection. But what he likes best is when the weiner dogs bark and yip and generally go nuts on the other side of the glass. He also seems to like us shouting “Hey Ricky!” at him. He wags a lot then.

He’s a handsome bird, and quite the predator. Most years in the middle of summer he goes missing for a couple of months. I assume he’s out there courting and sparking…but one year he stayed around and made this odd “mewing” sound at us from nests sloppily built out of twigs in several trees. We couldn’t figure if they were really nests or just hunting blinds!

This year he was gone from mid-April to late July.  His disappearance was shortly after he lost several tail feathers in the driveway during an apparent roadrunner & hawk? coyote? encounter. We’d seen him after that (with one tailfeather remaining) but only once or twice. Then his usual summer absence stretched much longer than usual and we got worried.

So it is great to see him back around the yard! Welcome home Ricky. Without him, we don’t get to see yard scenes like this video from a few years back (if you can ignore the incessant barking on the video…mute your volume) when Ricky decides to torture the weiner dogs face to face instead of through the front window:

Roadrunner Courting Dachshunds – Go Figure!

Who is the wildlife friend you look forward to seeing in your garden?

—A Larrapin Garden  www.larrapin.us
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