#roadrunner bird

Like I saw the mama birb, roadrunners are common in Texas, right? But then I noticed she had BABY BIRBS WITH HER. They were like a fourth of the size of the mama, and she was maybe the size of your average blackbird. So not big by any means, so babies were TINY.

I had to take a picture. I had to. This is the only one that came out okay

So yeah I tried to sneak up on them as quiet and slow as I could and I got some pictures but good gosh the birbs are so tiny they barely show up on the pic?? SO TINY. And I went, "As, man," when I realized I was getting crappy pics and I startled the birbs and instead of flying off they started running (roadrunners, they run first fly second) but mama was too fast for babies and the babies had no clue where to go! D:

And so I attempted to herd them in the direction of mama birb but pffffft one of them was so terrified of me they ran into a curb and I wish to god I was recording instead of doing pics because it made the cutest little "peep!" in the whole goddamn world! And it even did that thing cartoon characters did where it bounced off the concrete wall (poor bby), I felt so bad for it but oh my gosh it was adorable??

Eventually mama birb found all three of her baby birbs and herded them into the nest (because roadrunners build their nest down neat the ground. very fascinating!). I watched from a big distance to make sure I wasn't freaking mama birb out. And Ooooh! From watching them for 15 minutes I can now distinguish the roadrunner "where are you?" call and the "come here, children!" call! It blew my mind when I figured it out!