Flattened Fauna, Revised

by Roger M. Knutson

  FIELD MARKS AND RANGE The meadowlark is found from the East Coast to the West Coast and from Canada to Mexico, with a higher concentration in the Midwest. It winters in the South, as do many Midwesterners. The best single visible characteristic is the bright yellow breast. A bright yellow patch banded by black is nearly always visible in the well-developed road bird. The rest of the meadowlark is mottled tan, brown, and white. A nine-inch patch of feathers, a third of it yellow, will mark a meadowlark even for the beginner. Only the yellow-headed blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) of the West and Midwest is likely to be confused with the meadowlark. It is the same size and usually shows about the same amount of yellow, but the rest of the yellow-headed blackbird is nearly uniform black.

  Yellow-shafted Flickers (Colaptes auratus)

  11-inch body, 14-inch wings

  HABITS AND ABUNDANCE The flicker feeds on the ground more than any other North American woodpecker and rests on the road more than any but the redhead. Ants may constitute 75 percent of the flicker’s diet in some seasons. This bird will also pursue flying insects, a behavior that brings it into the path of fast-moving vehicles. Flickers are not aggressive birds, and many have been driven from their former urban homes by the more vigorous starlings. Flickers are now most commonly seen on roads near wooded regions, especially areas with farms, orchards, and isolated woodlots. In parts of the plains where trees are scarce, they will chip out nests in telephone or power poles, or even large fence posts. All these potential homes are nearer to traffic than would be best, especially for the young just beginning to develop flying and food-hunting skills. Playing near the road is never a good idea, and the number of young flickers permanently plastered there testifies to the danger.

  FIELD MARKS AND RANGE The common northern flicker lives in the eastern two-thirds of the U.S., and as far north as Central Alaska. From the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast, the red-shafted flicker is more common. Both are basically brown birds when seen on the road. The eastern flicker has a black bib and the nape of its neck is red. The western flicker has a red “mustache” and black bib. The golden-to-salmon color under their wings and tail is the only characteristic likely to be of much use after the first few cars have passed. If the bird happens to be right side up, a white rump patch is visible; if upside down, the black bib is obvious; and if lying on its side, only the wing and tail color will be useful.

  Road Runners (Geococcyx californianus)

  22 inches long (half tail)

  HABITS AND ABUNDANCE This is a less common inhabitant of the road than most other birds in the guide, but its close association with highways and traffic demand its inclusion. The road runner is capable of outdistancing a team of running horses, and early reports suggest that the birds seemed to enjoy these races. They would clearly rather run than fly, but even the earliest automobiles and trucks were faster than these birds expected. Its food consists mostly of lizards and small snakes, with insects and even an occasional small bird as an important supplement. The road runner occasionally feeds on carrion, which makes it especially likely to enter the road fauna during early summer and late fall, when lizards and snakes (before they become part of the flattened fauna themselves) seek the warmth of the road in the evening and early morning. When feeding its growing young in midsummer, this bird will recklessly follow lizards out onto the road surface, where occasionally both become road ornaments rather than road runners.

  FIELD MARKS AND RANGE Although the road runner is often described as a striking bird, more often it is a struck bird. It bears strongly mottled plumage, which is remarkably good camouflage in regions of strong sunlight and sparse plant cover. The plumage is coarse, white above and dark below, although on the road the colors could be mixed. The road runner is not a compact bird, and on the road it often looks like something has surprised it—it tends to seem more scattered than most birds. The only bird in the Southwest likely to be confused with it is the magpie (Picapicaalso hudsonicus), which also has a long tail but is slightly smaller and shows dramatic white wing patches in all road conditions.

  Road runner (Geococcyx californianus)

  This illustration was drawn from a dead road runner and is included to show something of the serenity achieved by a few road animals. The frantic pace of constant food-seeking has slowed considerably here. Regardless of traffic speed, the bird is clearly at rest.

  Barn Owls (Tyto alba)

  14–18 inches

  The barn owl and its near relatives live and die over nearly all the temperate and tropical world, but are so secretive that they are less well known than almost any other birds their size. A barn owl on the road may provide almost the only opportunity to get even a brief daylight glimpse of this unusual predator.

  HABITS AND ABUNDANCE As with many other members of the flattened fauna, association with human civilization and its artifacts can be fatal to barn owls. They ordinarily roost and nest in abandoned buildings well away from forests, flying out to feed only after dark. They cruise low and silently over open spaces, looking for rodents (their principal food), crossing and even paralleling roads and road edges. Lights of any kind, particularly moving lights, will disorient this bird. Their evolution as night hunters has in no way prepared them for the abrupt transition from darkness to the dazzling headlights of an eighteen-wheeler lumbering down the road. (Confusion on the highway is fatal to many animals, and the barn owl is no exception.) The combination of strictly nocturnal habits and nearness to human dwellings makes the barn owl more susceptible than most to late-night traffic.

  FIELD MARKS AND RANGE The barn owl is uncommon in the northern and mountain states, but is abundant over much of the country. It prefers warm climates; it is common in California, where it appears to have resettled, along with other Midwesterners. The barn owl’s legs are long enough to be obvious on almost any road specimen. Those, along with the white- to light-colored facial mask, are the dominant features. Time of day may be critical in identification. If the specimen wasn’t there the night before, or if it is about fourteen to eighteen inches across and mostly white or light in color, chances are you have spotted a barn owl. During daylight hours they are more properly called “road owls,” since they seldom are seen anywhere else. No other owl is so common on the road.

  Ring-necked Pheasants

  (Phasianus colchicus)

  24 inches plus

  No other road bird displays the brilliant plumage and long tail of this immigrant. As with many immigrants, its origin is uncertain and its ancestry mixed. The bird presently found on our highways is a mixture of English, Chinese, and probably Middle Eastern forebears (or forepheasants) that have adapted well, spread widely, and reproduced extensively since arrival in the U.S. in the 1880s and 1890s.

  HABITS AND ABUNDANCE The pheasant is active year-round, and it often finds the most suitable habitat at roadsides and in road ditches near cultivated fields. The ditch’s unmown grass provides cover for the simple nest, and the gravel,8 discarded grain, and insects of the road edge provide the necessities of daily life. When snow covers much of the feeding areas in fields, flocks of pheasants are almost confined to the road edge during daylight hours. They are fast but not agile flyers, and many road pheasants are first struck while trying to fly from one road edge to another. Why the pheasant crosses the road is a question with no easy answer, but the fact that it attempts to do so often is obvious.

  FIELD MARKS AND RANGE The male’s iridescent purple head, prominent white neck ring, bronze-to-greenish body, and extremely long tail are reliable marks in almost any road condition. The foot-long tail feathers banded in tan and brown are almost never bent or broken by even severe impact, and constitute the best single feature. The females are a uniform mottled brown, but share the long tail. The pheasant on the road is most common in the Great Plains and is found more often than any other bird in several states including South Dakota and Nebraska. They occur only sporadically in the South and far West.

  8 The pheasant, like oth
er gallinaceous (chicken-like) birds, needs gravel for its gizzard, where the gravel helps grind up the seeds in the diet.

  chapter 6

  This section lists mammals by size, from smallest to largest. The largest mammals treated in detail are raccoons, even though they are only marginally flattened in most cases. In animals larger than the marmot, the flattening process is complex; in some cases it produces a shape more like a spiral than the simpler forms illustrated there. For example, the longitudinal stripes of a skunk may in come cases appear as a series of diagonal white lines crossing the long axis of the body. Any large, partially flattened animal may produce a pattern too confusing for identification.

  Since mammals of all sizes are clearly killed along the road, some mention of the larger species of mammals may be helpful, even though they never become part of the flattened fauna. Not only do the larger creatures rarely present the nearly two-dimensional character of the true road fauna (Fauna itinerarius), but also most often they are not found on the road proper but only on its margins. Some authorities suggest that the larger mammals should be considered “edge” species, characteristically occupying the habitat between the road proper and the surrounding countryside.

  Among the larger forms—moose, elk, deer, antelope, caribou, bison, bear, and wolves—only the white-tailed dear of the eastern U.S. is likely to be encountered often enough to be worth specific mention. Each year, thousands of these animals join the ranks of the fauna that, if not flattened, are at least somewhat compressed. Most road fatalities are the result of the deer’s normal behavior patterns, and its inability to adjust to a new habitat (the road) and a new predator (the automobile). Deer are crepuscular, which means they are most active around dusk or twilight, a time when drivers don’t see as well and when lights are most likely to confuse the deer. Deer also frequent forest edges—safe places to be in a roadless wilderness—since they can see potential predators at some distance, and since food of edible height is plentiful. As eastern forests were cleared for agriculture, and as roads crisscrossed the deer’s normal range, the amount of forest edge—much of it adjacent to high-speed traffic—has increased. A deer that can clear an eight-foot obstacle from a standing start could easily leap over a moving car; but few deer recognize vehicles as a specific danger until too late. Young deer are especially susceptible, and are disproportionately represented on highway edges.

  Drivers interested specifically in the mammals of the road fauna are hereby warned that the larger forms are genuinely dangerous. Fixing a squirrel on the road for later study might be an excusable, if morally reprehensible, act; but any creature of beaver-size or larger represents a significant hazard to vehicle and driver. In an interesting reversal of the usual pattern by which creatures enter the flattened fauna, a deer, bear, or equivalent-sized animal has a fair shot at flattening at least some part of the vehicle involved in such an encounter—and in some cases, flattening the drivers as well. Next to drivers, deer and other large mammals are the most dangerous creatures likely to be encountered on the road.

  Bats (order Chiroptera)

  Various genera and dozens of species. Wings are mostly 9–12 inches across, but because of folding, most bats on the road are less than 9 inches maximum dimension.

  HABITS AND ABUNDANCE No creature of the road fauna is as close to the road as the bat and yet few people who travel the U.S. highways will be aware of them. Nearly all bats weigh less than an ounce and, spread on the road, they are thin, hardly visible, and very seldom identifiable to the auto traveler. For the biker and hiker, however, bats can contribute significantly to the road scene. William F. Adams of Wilmington, North Carolina, studies the road fauna from a bicycle. He suggests that most road bats were hunting insects along the length of the road, much as they do when they fly down the course of small rivers and creeks to locate their food. Roads with forests on both sides are prime habitat for many species of highway bats. Bats locate their flying insect prey with a kind of radar and are capable of following the erratic path of a flying insect in complete darkness until they snatch it from the air and eat it on the wing. Such concentration on nontraffic matters while flying along a highway can be quickly fatal. The bat’s evolutionary adaptations have no responses to creatures as large or as fast as a car, and even if they did, radar doesn’t work as well for avoiding moving objects as it does for following them. Since bats often fly higher off the ground than the height of most automobiles, they are often the victims of taller trucks. A truck near a bat zeroing in on a moth will almost certainly overload the bat’s radar system. A bat near the centerline of a forest-edged road, concentrating on a fluttering moth, may never be aware of the vehicle that turns it into what often looks like an irregularly shaped piece of black plastic on the road surface.

  FIELD MARKS No creature on the road is so variably shaped as the bat. They are almost always folded over on themselves several times. Some appear nearly circular; others may look like a bit of dark cloth cut into a six-pointed star. The following silhouettes suggest something of an average initial shape, but after a day or less, they will assume the detailed contours of the road and will often be indistinguishable by either color or shape.

  Bats (order Chiroptera)

  Road bats can look like almost anything. If these black shapes seem like dirty pictures to you, don’t spend too much time looking for Chiroptera. Road bats vary in size from less than six inches to more than twelve inches across. The scale marker shown would fit most of the common bats found north of Mexico.

  Mice and Voles (family Cricetidae)

  2–3 inches × 4–6 inches, with long, usually hairless tail

  About twenty species in North America make up the family Cricetidae. Cricetid means hamsterlike. These are the smallest visible members of the road fauna, on the average even smaller than the width of the yellow line, although a few may be as long as six inches. (The eastern woodrat, Neotoma floridana, may be nearly nine inches long.) Most Cricetids will be easier to spot by bikers and hikers than by drivers.

  HABITS AND ABUNDANCE Considered collectively, mice and voles eat nearly anything, breed prolifically, and are subject to population explosions when conditions are right. A single species may have a population in the hundreds per acre, and even though they live for only a few months before dying from predation or old age, they are nowhere near as abundant on the road as their field numbers might indicate. Most are stay-at-homes who don’t travel any distance or in any numbers unless conditions have become intolerable, such as when seventy-five cousins and brothers-in-law move into the old nest. When out of their burrows, mice and voles demonstrate what is called wall-seeking behavior: an overpowering urge to be near some vertical surface. This keeps most of them off the road. The meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus) is capable of producing populations that may number in the thousands per acre for a short time, until snakes, owls, hawks, and even Firebirds, Cougars, Jaguars, and Foxes flatten out the population curve.

  FIELD MARKS AND RANGE Many of the mice and voles are so uniform in color that even close examination reveals only a three-by-five-inch spot roughly the color of a weathered asphalt surface. The large bulging eyes common to most of the small mammals will be visible only to very slow-moving traffic. The deer mouse (Peromyscus species) and some of the woodrats (Neotoma species) have contrasting white underparts that may show on the road. Numerous species of mice and voles are present in every corner (next to the wall) of North America, with the widest variety in the Southeast. Do not even bother trying to identify any of the mice and voles on the road: identifying marks are gone quickly, and the dangers of slowing down are not worth the minimal rewards of adding yet another Cricetid to your death list.

  The shrews (family Soricidae) are about the size of mice and voles, but as carnivores they are much less numerous in the fields and on the roads. Only the elongated nose will distinguish the road shrew from the road vole. (See illustration.)

  1. Vole, dorsi-ventral presentation.

  2. Ho
use mouse, lateral presentation (photocopy by Canon NP-350F).

  3. Deer mouse, dorsi-ventral presentation.

  4. Short-tailed shrew.

  Eastern Chipmunks (Tamias striatus)

  5 × 2 inches, with a 3-inch short-furred tail

  HABITS AND ABUNDANCE Over all of eastern North America, the chipmunk is found in brushy parts of deciduous forests, often in parks and campgrounds. Chipmunks are likely to forage along roadsides and often have little fear of people or cars. They normally eat nuts, berries, and acorns, but will not scorn a bit of road carrion, even that of a near relative. In autumn they accumulate food for the winter and are busy enough to be distracted from even minimal concern with traffic. In early spring, their mating chases will also distract these animals from watching out for automobiles. Chipmunks are occasionally found together in pairs on the road during mating season. The young leave the parental burrow at five or six weeks and often travel long distances. The combination of naivete and vacation traffic makes this attractive little mammal abundant on the road. The chipmunk hibernates in the northern parts of its range, but it may be found on roads alongside parks and woods in all seasons further south.

  Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus)

  The chipmunk has so little substance inside its fur that its shape on the road closely resembles its shape in the woods. Its size and the presence of light-colored longitudinal stripes sets this animal apart from any mimics.

  FIELD MARKS AND RANGE The eastern chipmunk is by far the most common small mammal on urban park roads, but several western species (very similar when flat) occur in mountainous areas. All species show similar longitudinal stripes on a background of tan to brown. The road chipmunk usually reveals a pointed nose and a slightly bushy tail. Feet and ears are not likely to be visible.