Meet the Real Roadrunner
by Howard Youth
Put aside your cartoon memories and meet the Zoo's new male roadrunner. Before you see him, however, you should dispel previous notions of a ditsy-looking blue bird that pecks at dishes of birdseed on isolated highways. North America's greater roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) is brown and white, and it looks much more reptilian than the pheasant-like bird of animation fame. With its piercing bright yellow eyes, stiff long tail, menacing bill, and long legs and claws, the roadrunner looks somewhat like a feathery dinosaur.
Roadrunners are well named. They are weak flyers, often relying upon their strong, scaly legs to carry them from danger and toward food. Many visitors to the Southwest see roadrunners because they are large and fast moving and inhabit open habitats. They do often run across roads, but despite their impressive speed they do not always make it to the other side. (I remember seeing one flattened on a highway in New Mexico, where the roadrunner, by the way, is the state bird.)
Although roadrunners may look awkward, they are serious predators. Roadrunners are masters of opportunity, capturing a variety of prey, including lizards, scorpions, snakes, rodents, small birds, eggs, millipedes, spiders, and insects. They occasionally dine on carrion. In addition, berries and seeds make up about ten percent of their diet.
Caught away from a burrow, few creatures stand much chance of outrunning a roadrunner, which often zips across the desert or scrub at 15 miles per hour. Some have been clocked at 20 miles per hour. However, a roadrunner will sometimes give up the chase if a particularly tough lizard or snake stands its ground and manages to keep its head clear of that jabbing bill.
Roadrunner killing techniques are not for the fainthearted. The crow-sized roadrunner usually clamps its bill over its victim's head, then--with rigorous sweeps of its bushy crested head--it thrashes back and forth and up and down, smashing its victim against a rock or other hard object and crushing its head before swallowing it whole. A roadrunner may spend 15 minutes pulverizing tough meals such as horned lizards. But a good part of its diet consists of easily swallowed grasshoppers, crickets, and other small invertebrates it startles and catches as it scoots through grasses and shrubs. At the Zoo, the roadrunner's diet includes dead mice, pelleted food, and insects that he captures on his runs through the exhibit.
Food items often play an important part in roadrunner courtship. In early spring, roadrunner pairs reaffirm their bond through courting and mating rituals. A male dashes close behind a female, a tempting lizard or snake dangling from his bill. He wags his cocked tail from side to side and occasionally springs into the air and clumsily hovers to keep her attention. If the female accepts the morsel instead of running away, the pair usually mates. Visitors to the Zoo may soon be able to view such behavior--there is a good chance that our male will be joined by a female in May or June.
The life of a wild roadrunner does have its dangers, and there are times when the predator becomes prey. Although they often escape ambush, roadrunners are occasionally preyed upon by hawks and house cats. Raccoons, rat snakes, bullsnakes, skunks, and, yes, coyotes eat nestlings and eggs. But a much more menacing enemy for the nonmigratory roadrunner is the cold: During the winter months, many succumb to freezing, icy weather.
Roadrunners are members of the cuckoo family. Best known as nest parasites--stealthfully laying their eggs in the nests of other birds--many cuckoo species do not even build nests. The best-known, the common cuckoo of cuckoo-clock fame, lays eggs in the nests of a variety of European songbirds, many of which are smaller at full adult size than the hefty cuckoo chicks they end up raising. However, North America's cuckoos build their own nests and raise their own young. The roadrunner's three North American relatives--the yellow-billed, black-billed, and mangrove cuckoos--are much more reclusive, and much smaller (about the size of a cardinal). They spend much of their time concealed in thick foliage, skulking in the shadows in search of caterpillars and other insects to feed themselves and their young.
Roadrunner pairs remain together for years. During the early spring, after courtship and mating, the female, with some help from her mate, builds a nest of twigs in the crotch of a short tree or a clump of cacti. The male spends much of his time shuttling back and forth, collecting twigs for the female. The nest is lined with a variety of objects, including snake skin, cow patties, and the pods of mesquite. Roadrunners usually lay between three and six eggs, which the female and male take turns incubating. Rarely, nests contain nine or more eggs. What may first appear to be an unusually large clutch is probably a rare case of two females laying eggs in the same nest.
Once the young are born, both parents dote upon them. Adults often bring horned lizards and other daunting tidbits to their nestlings and shove them down their throats. But if the chick struggles, a parent takes out the dead prey and tries it on another nestling. If that doesn't work, the adult roadrunner takes the food for itself.
Although a highly visible part of the arid Southwest, the greater roadrunner is not an abundant bird. Over much of its range it is rather thinly distributed in dry habitats including desert, brush, and thickets. Geographically, though, the roadrunner' s range is impressive, and it has been expanding in recent years, probably due in part to an increase in overgrazed, cleared areas that provide plenty of shrubby cover. The greater roadrunner is found from California east to western Louisiana and Arkansas, north to the lowlands of Colorado and Nevada, and south to southern Mexico, where its closest relative, the lesser roadrunner (Geococcyx velox), takes over and occurs south to Nicaragua.
While you cannot be guaranteed a roadrunner sighting on a visit West, you can now count on meeting this southwestern speedster at the National Zoo's Outdoor Flight Exhibit. As long as you are not a lizard, snake, or other small creature, you are bound to enjoy your encounter.
(ZooGoer 26(3) 1997. Copyright 1997 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.)
