Birds
Roadrunner
Geococcyx · also called greater roadrunner, chaparral cock
The roadrunner is a cuckoo that traded flying for running. It sprints across the desert at over 30 km per hour on long strong legs, hunts lizards, scorpions, and even small rattlesnakes, and gets through the desert by wringing water out of its own droppings and sunbathing off the overnight chill each morning. The cartoon got the speed right and almost nothing else — the real bird coos like a dove.
Overview
The roadrunner is a large ground-dwelling member of the cuckoo family, native to the deserts, chaparral, and dry grassland of the North American southwest and Mexico. There are two species, the widespread greater roadrunner and the lesser roadrunner of Mexico and Central America. It is a bold generalist predator, taking lizards, snakes, large insects, scorpions, tarantulas, rodents, and small birds, and killing bigger prey by beating it against a rock.
Built to run
The roadrunner can fly only in short low glides — to cross a gully or reach a fence post. Everything else is done on foot, with powerful legs, a long rudder-and-brake tail, and a sprint speed around 32 km/h. It takes rattlesnakes by feinting, grabbing behind the head, and slamming them down, sometimes working in pairs, and swallows an over-long snake in stages.
Desert survival
On cold mornings the roadrunner drops into a mild torpor, then rewarms by turning its back to the sun and exposing a patch of black skin that acts as a solar panel. It has a seabird-style salt gland and reabsorbs water from its faeces, so it rarely needs to drink.
Status
Least Concern and stable. The greater roadrunner has expanded east and north over the past century as land was cleared, reaching Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. Roadrunners are still killed on roads and were once shot as supposed quail predators.
Roadrunner: common questions
Can a roadrunner fly?
Yes, but poorly and reluctantly. A roadrunner has full wings and can fly, but only in short, low, gliding bursts of a few seconds, usually to cross a ravine, get up onto a fence post or low branch, or escape a predator it cannot outrun on the ground. It cannot sustain flight for any distance. Almost everything in its life, including hunting, courtship, escaping most threats, and covering its territory, is done on foot, and its body reflects that, with powerful legs, a long tail used as a rudder and brake, and relatively small flight muscles. In practice it behaves much more like a small ground predator than like a typical bird.
Do roadrunners really kill rattlesnakes?
They do, though rattlesnakes are only an occasional item, not a staple. A roadrunner hunts snakes by circling and feinting to make the snake strike and miss, then darting in to grab it just behind the head, and it will slam the snake against a rock or hard ground repeatedly until it is dead or stunned. Pairs sometimes cooperate, with one bird holding the snake's attention while the other attacks from behind. If the snake is too long to swallow whole, the roadrunner simply swallows as much as fits and walks around with the rest protruding from its bill, digesting it a section at a time. Roadrunners take far more lizards, insects, and rodents than snakes overall.
Why does a roadrunner sit with its back to the sun in the morning?
It is warming up cheaply. Desert nights are cold, and to save energy a roadrunner lets its body temperature and metabolic rate drop overnight, entering a mild torpor. Reheating by burning food would be expensive, so instead the bird faces away from the rising sun, fluffs up the feathers on its upper back, and exposes a patch of black skin along the spine that absorbs solar heat directly. This solar basking can supply a large fraction of the energy the bird would otherwise have to eat to rewarm, and it is one of several water- and energy-saving tricks that let the roadrunner live somewhere with little food and less water.
Does the real roadrunner say beep beep?
No. The beeping call is an invention of the Warner Bros cartoon, which began in 1949 and bears little resemblance to the animal. A real greater roadrunner makes a series of low, slow, descending coo notes, rather like a mourning dove or a distant owl, usually given by a male from a perch at dawn. It also produces a rapid clattering or whirring sound by grinding its bill halves together, used in aggression and excitement. The cartoon did get a few things right in spirit, since the bird is genuinely fast, lives in the desert, and is hard for a predator to catch, but the coyote is a real and effective roadrunner predator, not a hapless one.