How to Know the Birds: No. 15, The Incomparable Coolness and Supreme Glory of Roadrunners

You could make the case that I shouldn’t have gone birding that Friday morning. I had a meeting to attend and a presentation to prep for; I had a crushing load of deadlines in the week ahead; and I was carless at a high-rise hotel at that mother-of-all-intersections of I-40 and I-25 in downtown Albuquerque.

You can probably guess the outcome.

I managed to Frogger my way across the interchange, then up a gravelly embankment, and past a dude asking for drugs, eventually arriving at this place:

All by myself up there on the steep concrete berm above the low-flow canal, I couldn’t help myself: I pumped my first into the air; I smiled widely and wildly; I exclaimed out loud, “That is the coolest bird in the world!” Actually, there was one other person in the general vicinity: the dude seeking drugs. I suppose I can see that he thought I was high on something. High on seeing a roadrunner.

The ground, I noticed, was shaking. You might be able to tell why from the excessive ambient noise in the video above. But if it’s not coming to you, here’s the deal:

That’s what was going on immediately below me and behind me. And a little farther out, the morning rush smack dab in the middle of one of America’s big cities:

Isn’t this the greatest thing about being a birder? Surrounded by traffic and construction, immersed in urban infrastructure, I found myself in the presence of what has to be just about the greatest bird in the ABA Area if not the whole planet.

Should I have gone birding that busy Friday morning? Was there ever even any doubt about it?

Join the American Birding Association at www.aba.org!