Born to run
It can run at 20 miles an hour, steering and braking with its long tail.
The Great Plains
Greater roadrunner
Geococcyx californianus
A long-legged, streaky brown bird with a shaggy crest and a very long tail. It would rather run than fly.
- Size
- About 55cm long, half of it tail
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Deserts and dry scrub of the south-western United States and Mexico
Dashes after you, tail out behind. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Roadrunner
Good to know
Six things about the roadrunner
A cuckoo that runs
The roadrunner belongs to the cuckoo family.
Snake for lunch
It eats lizards, scorpions and even young rattlesnakes, which it beats against a rock.
X-shaped tracks
Two toes point forward and two back, so you cannot tell from its footprints which way it went.
A solar panel
On cold mornings it turns its back to the sun and lifts its feathers to show a patch of black skin that soaks up heat.
No beep beep
The real bird does not go beep beep. It coos like a dove and clatters its beak.
The real thing
Photos of the roadrunner
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Look along quiet desert roads and tracks early in the day. It often runs ahead of you, then darts off into the scrub.
How to help
Roadrunners need open, scrubby desert. Leaving desert plants in place when land is built on gives them room to hunt.
Keep going