Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus): Facts and Speed

Appearance: a streaky bird with a crest and a long tail

A greater roadrunner looks like a slim, streaky brown chicken with a very long tail. The back and wings are brown and buff, heavily streaked with black, and some feathers have a glossy green or bronze sheen in good light. The neck and chest are pale with dark streaks, and the belly is plain whitish.

The head carries a shaggy crest of dark feathers that the bird raises when excited or alarmed. Behind each eye is a patch of bare skin. In adults it is pale blue next to the eye and orange-red at the back, though the orange often hides under feathers until the bird displays.

The bill is long, strong and slightly hooked at the tip, an ideal tool for grabbing and crushing prey. The legs are long and gray-blue. Each foot has four toes in an X shape, two pointing forward and two backward, a toe arrangement called zygodactyl that cuckoos share with parrots and woodpeckers. That arrangement leaves the roadrunner’s famous X-shaped footprint in sand and mud. Males and females look alike.

Size: how big is a roadrunner?

The greater roadrunner is the largest cuckoo in the Americas, but much of its length is tail.

Females are slightly smaller and lighter than males on average, by about 2 cm and 30 g. Even a large roadrunner weighs about as much as a can of soup, which surprises people who expect a bird the size of its cartoon reputation.

Its only close relative is the lesser roadrunner (Geococcyx velox), a smaller species of Mexico and Central America with a shorter bill and less streaking on the chest.

Habitat and range

Greater roadrunners live in open, dry country with scattered shrubs. Typical habitats are desert scrub with creosote bush, mesquite and cactus, chaparral, dry grassland with bushes, open juniper woodland, the edges of farms and, increasingly, suburbs and golf courses. They need some cover for nesting and shade, plus open ground for running and hunting.

The range covers the southwestern and south-central United States, including California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, with smaller numbers in southern Colorado, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana. In Mexico it ranges from Baja California and Sonora south through the central highlands. The species is found from below sea level in desert basins up to about 2,300 m (7,500 ft), occasionally higher.

Roadrunners do not migrate. A pair usually stays on the same territory all year. Over the last century the species has spread east and north into parts of Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana, helped by changes in land use. For other wildlife of this region, see our guide to desert animals.

Speed and movement: running instead of flying

The roadrunner’s name says it all. It usually runs at a steady 29–32 km/h (18–20 mph), and speeds of about 42 km/h (26 mph) have been reported over short distances. While running, it holds its head and tail level with the ground and uses the long tail as a rudder to swerve and brake. Roads, trails and dry riverbeds are favorite running tracks because they are open and smooth.

It can fly, but not far. A roadrunner usually flies only a few meters, to hop onto a fence post, roost in a tree or glide down from a perch. Its short, rounded wings are built for quick bursts, not long flights. More detail is in how fast can a roadrunner run?.

Diet and hunting

Greater roadrunners are mainly predators. They walk or run through their territory, watching for movement, then dash forward and grab prey with the bill. Their food includes:

• Invertebrates: grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars, crickets, scorpions, centipedes and spiders, including tarantulas and black widows.
• Reptiles: many kinds of lizards, plus snakes, including small rattlesnakes.
• Mammals: mice, young ground squirrels and other small rodents; bats have been recorded.
• Birds: small songbirds, hummingbirds, and the eggs and chicks of other birds.
• Other food: occasional carrion, fruit such as cactus fruit and sumac berries, and a few seeds, mostly in winter.

Large or struggling prey is beaten against a rock or the ground until it stops moving, and then swallowed whole, usually head first. When a lizard or snake is too long to swallow at once, the bird swallows what fits and walks about with the rest hanging from its bill, swallowing more as the front end digests. Roadrunners also leap into the air to snatch flying insects and small birds. Moisture-rich prey supplies much of the water they need. The question of snakes has its own page: do roadrunners eat rattlesnakes?

Surviving desert heat and cold

Roadrunners are active by day in a habitat that can be very hot in summer and frosty on winter nights, and they have several ways of coping.

• Saving water: a salt gland near each eye gets rid of excess salt in a concentrated fluid, which uses less water than excreting it through the kidneys. The gut also reabsorbs water efficiently.
• Staying cool: in summer they are most active in the morning and late afternoon and rest in shade at midday. Like many birds, they cool down by panting and by fluttering the bare skin of the throat.
• Saving energy at night: on cold nights a roadrunner can let its body temperature fall from about 40 °C (104 °F) to about 34 °C (93 °F), cutting its energy use by more than 30 percent.
• Sunbathing: in the morning it turns its back to the sun, droops its wings and raises the feathers of the back, exposing patches of dark skin that soak up heat. On cold mornings this can last for two to three hours.

Behavior and voice

Outside the breeding season roadrunners are usually seen alone or in pairs. Pairs defend a territory and often keep it year-round. Males are the more territorial partner and chase intruders away.

The most common call is a slow, descending series of about six low coos, often given by the male from a high perch such as a fence post, dead tree or cactus early in the morning. Roadrunners also make loud clattering sounds by snapping the bill, whining and whirring notes, and soft calls between mates. None of these sounds like the cartoon’s “beep beep”.

Reproduction and life cycle

Greater roadrunners are monogamous and pairs may stay together for several years. Courtship includes chases, tail-wagging, bowing and the male offering food or nesting material to the female. Breeding takes place mainly from spring to early fall, and in good rainy summers a pair may raise a second brood.

Both partners build the nest: the male brings sticks and the female arranges them. It is a compact platform of thorny twigs lined with grass, feathers, roots, snakeskin and even dry dung, placed 1–3 m (3–10 ft) up in a cactus, thorny bush or small tree. The female usually lays 3–6 white eggs, one every day or two, and incubation starts with the first egg, so the chicks hatch on different days.

Both parents incubate for about 20 days, with the male usually sitting at night. The chicks leave the nest about 18 days after hatching, but stay with their parents and are fed for some weeks afterward, at least until they are about 50 days old. On rare occasions roadrunners lay eggs in other birds’ nests, such as those of common ravens and northern mockingbirds, a habit that echoes their cuckoo relatives.

Lifespan, predators and conservation status

Few roadrunners have been followed for life, so their typical wild lifespan is not well known. Bird banding records show that wild individuals can live at least 7 years.

Adults are caught by coyotes, bobcats and other mammals, and by hawks such as Cooper’s and red-tailed hawks. Eggs and nestlings are taken by snakes, raccoons, ravens and other nest predators. The coyote is a real predator, and it can easily outrun a roadrunner on open ground, which is why the birds dodge into cover rather than race in a straight line.

People affect roadrunners through habitat loss, roads and fragmentation of desert scrub into housing, but the species also adapts well to rural areas and low-density suburbs.

The greater roadrunner is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN, with a large range and a population estimated by Partners in Flight at about one million birds. North American Breeding Bird Survey data suggest numbers have been broadly stable since the 1960s, with increases in some states and declines in others. It is protected in the United States under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Myths and facts

• Myth: roadrunners are much faster than coyotes. In reality, a coyote can reach about 65 km/h (40 mph), roughly twice a roadrunner’s speed. Roadrunners survive by agility, cover and alertness.
• Myth: roadrunners cannot fly. They can, just not far or often.
• Fact: roadrunners do kill snakes. Small rattlesnakes are on the menu, though they are a small part of the diet.
• Fact: they are cuckoos. Despite their looks, roadrunners belong to the cuckoo family. Read more in is a roadrunner a cuckoo?

Relationship with people

The roadrunner has a long place in the culture of the Southwest. Some Pueblo peoples saw it as a protective bird, and its X-shaped track, which hides the direction it is heading, was used as a symbol to confuse evil spirits. In parts of Mexico it was said to bring babies, much as storks were in Europe, and frontier settlers told stories of roadrunners leading lost travelers back to trails.

It is the state bird of New Mexico and the mascot of many schools and sports teams. Since 1949 it has been known worldwide through the Warner Bros. cartoons of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. The real bird is often tolerant of people and is a familiar sight on roadsides, ranch yards and suburban gardens across its range.