Wild Birds

As I mentioned in my last posting the roadrunner is the state bird of New Mexico. Did you know that each of the 50 states has named a bird to be their state bird? And each state also has a state flower, state mammal, state fish, state reptile, and maybe other state things similar that I know nothing about. It is interesting to find out about these things.
Here at the Tumbleweed Crossing we get a lot of wild birds coming in to either find water, food, or nesting places. Most of the time they are welcome to come and stay as long as they want. I have always been some what of an amiture bird watcher. Roadrunners are one of the rarer birds that come through. Most of the time they are as welcome as the other birds. Roadrunners are members of the cuckoo family and can only be found in the lower elevations of the southwestern United States and Mexico. They are a fairly large bird that looks to be about 18 to 24 inches tall depending on if you count just the head or include that long tail that is usually sticking straight up behind him except when he is running and it is stuck out behind him. I like roadrunners as they eat snakes. Yes, you read that right they eat snakes and that includes rattlesnakes. It can be quite a sight to see a roadrunner killing a highly poisonous snake so it can eat it.
Roadrunners also dine on lots of mice and small rats which is a plus any way you look at it. But on the down side they will eat the baby quail that I dearly love to see, as well as young doves, sparrows, wrens, finches and other birds. Roadrunners are in the carnivore category. Last winter we had one that found that we had water in the heated water buckets for the horses. Each day it would come in and get a drink out of one of the heated buckets and then leave.
I have mentioned the quail. We have what is called 'Scaled Quail' which are similar to the top knot quail of Arizona, only they don't have as large a top knot. In the spring you can see the large winter flocks breaking up into pairs and a few weeks later the pairs will have tiny puff balls following them. By fall the puff balls are almost as big as their parents and the winter flocks form again. I have seen as many as 20 at a time coming in to water in our yard. We keep solid hubcaps for the quail to drink out of. They want water on the ground as they don't fly unless forced into it. They seem to prefer the shallow hubcaps to deeper containers. Hubcaps work well as they can be scrubbed out when they get lots of algae in them, and don't cost anything at the junk yards. I have used the deeper black hamburger trays that are about 4 inches deep but in the spring the baby quail drown in something this deep. I found it out the hard way and don't use them any more in the spring but do in the fall and winter.
I can't afford to feed all the birds that come in so all I put out is the water. We have other birds that come in every morning and evening to drink. Lots of sparrows, red headed house finches, starlings, and doves that are the year round residents, but during migrations we get hummingbirds, gold finches, fly catchers, swallows, and ravens. We are lucky that we get a few redtailed hawks, sparrow hawks or kestrels, coopers hawks, and on rare occasions a golden or bald eagle. We used to see several vultures around but not in a long time. Although not pretty they are good birds as they eat a lot of the road killed rabbits. And we have lots of rabbits. Mostly the desert cottontails but also jackrabbits. They seem to know that they are safe inside of our wire fenced yard where the coyotes can't get to them.
And yes we have coyotes. We see them at times and hear them yipping and howling almost every evening. I am not overly fond of them but know we need them to keep down the rodents and rabbits. And they did live here before people did.