We were outside checking on the bird feeders when there it was, a roadrunner! Everything about it is long: long legs, long neck and long feathered tail. Even their beak is long, heavy and curved. Roadrunners, are cuckoos and about the size of a crow. They are tan and brown with specks of black and a short crest. They are fast…so fast that by the time we slipped quietly into the Research Center to get the camera — it was gone! (Special thanks to Jack W. who taught me (still a novice) many years ago how to identify a roadrunner when I saw this odd-looking creature literally “run” down from his property up in the hillsides and across the roadway and into Holly Haven. Thanks, Jack).
And here’s an interesting fact, In Native American Culture, the Hopi and other Pueblo tribes believed that roadrunners could protect against evil spirits and they are used as sacred symbols. Roadrunners have an unusual X-shaped footprint and these medicine birds are believed to ward off evil in many Pueblo tribes. The protective power of the roadrunner is evident in the X-shape of their tracks that conceals which direction the roadrunner is headed thereby throwing evil spirits off track.
L.Davide & M. Lopez