Local enthusiast documents roadrunners

link Staff photo: Tony Bullocks

Dan True of Clovis, a writer, gets up close to a roadrunner before it heads off to feed its baby.

Roadrunners “live on the edge,” and lately a few in rural Curry County have been living on the edge with 90-year-old WWII veteran and former television weatherman Dan True living the life and dining on lizards and mice.

True, who has been documenting wildlife most of his life, has elaborately set up video and photography cameras around a family of state birds, which consists of two females and one male.

His camera is positioned in a tree 16 feet high, and True climbs a 14 foot ladder to set it up.

“It struck me that there’s very little known about that bird,” True said between bites of lunch at the Senior Citizen’s Center, where he eats everyday. “And now that we are doing a documentary, we are proven right. There are a lot of things not known about that bird.”

One thing even True and his assistant, Quineil Roark, have learned over the last month is that one roadrunner family is made of two females and one male.

“Now, the biologists have been curious for years why, in one roadrunner’s nest, they will find half-grown chicks and then eggs,” True said. “Two females. They live on the edge; there’s just not a lot of food available. So they figure it takes three adults to raise a family, and they’re pretty close to right.”

True said each roadrunner has a different eye pattern — sometimes the white patch in front of its eye can be a square or a little diamond. At the rear of the eye, True said, male roadrunners have color. The females do not.

True has been able to prove that it takes three roadrunners to a nest from photographic evidence showing three different “head patterns” on one nest. He noticed three different head patterns on a nest in a different location as well.

“So there’s no question about it, and no one knows this but me,” True said. “We discovered it. That’s how we’ve solved the argument about three adults (on one nest).”

But his documentation doesn’t come without problems, he said. One of the biggest challenges he’s faced is lighting, which almost ruined a $7,000 camera thanks to some mischievous roadrunners.

“I thought it was a disaster,” True said. “I have on a magnetic base a halogen lamp that lights the nest like a Hollywood set. The roadrunners get on my camera, and they got on that light and knocked it off. It lodged between the lens hood and the camera. It’s a hot bulb, so it melted out a lot of the lens hood, and it destroyed the manual focus ring.”

Luckily, he said, the camera was still usable since he’s set it to focus automatically — which isn’t controlled by the melted focus ring.

True has since found a solution to every single problem he may face while documenting roadrunner families. He’s built covers to protect his 90-millimeter cameras from the elements so that he can film in rain, snow or wind. He’s taken remote controls from cars and configured them to operate the zoom and power functions on his camera.

“I took that controller and the devices — there are two; one’s a throttle and the other’s steering,” True said. “I took the steering device so that I can zoom in or zoom out. What used to turn the wheels zooms my camera. What used to give it throttle to go, ‘Vroom,’ turns my camera on or off.”

True is no stranger to documenting or raising wildlife. He’s even raised an eagle from egg to its adult stages. In his earlier years — he estimated in his 50s or 60s — he became the first to confidently say that the incubation period for baby eagles is 41 days.

“Here’s how I did it. You know those little tape recorders that are sound activated?” he asked. “I took a long wire, a tiny little button mic at the end of an aluminum tube, I put that button mic in the wire, and I pushed that little mic right up next to the eggs, and I withdrew the aluminum tube. The wire is so small (momma bird) won’t see that microphone.”

True then ran the wire back to the top of the cliff to his tape recorder and waited.

“I got a lot of coyotes, and then day 39, ‘Cheep cheep cheep!’ Day 39. I’m just ecstatic! Day 39, hatch time! For 36 hours, cheep cheep cheep — but no hatch,” True said. “They come out, little fuzzy furballs, good eagle food. And I think, just my thinking, I think the little chick is saying, ‘Hey mom, when I come into the world, please don’t grab me and eat me.’”

And then he finally heard his hatch on the 41st day.

“Face it, that’s an ingenious system,” True said. “I have to rappel over the cliff, I have to go over on ropes and go all the way to the canyon floor and hike back up.”

True said he still rappels down cliffs — not alone, of course — to continue his documentation of eagles in New Mexico.

“It’s 400 feet to canyon floor, and there’s no way back up, so somebody’s gotta come pick me up,” True said.

Not many people his age can do what he does, he said, but his secret to living a long, full life is his genes and listening to his body.

“There is nothing my age has stopped me from doing,” True said. “First of all I’ve got good genes. When I’m going 900 mph and my body raps me on my head, I listen to what my body says.”

And he’s still going strong. True said what he loves the most about nature is its honesty.

“Nature is honest,” True said. “No lies, only truths. And I like that.”