Most people who visit the deserts of the southwestern United States catch at least a glimpse of a Greater Roadrunner as it dashes across the highway. Once it reaches the sanctuary of the desert on the other side of the road, however, the roadrunner quickly disappears without trace amongst the sparse cover offered by the creosote bush and scattered boulders. Most of its activities take place unobserved by human eyes.

During the spring of 1992, along the shores of Lake Mead, I had an excellent opportunity to observe some of the more private aspects of the roadrunner’s life. Although the roadrunner is frequently seen, it is quite secretive about most aspects of its life. Despite its size, of approximately two feet from beak to tail, it is remarkably adept at concealing itself at Lake Mead. I met a roadrunner christened ‘Fred’ by residents of a campground along the lake’s shoreline. Fred is a wild roadrunner, living in the Mojave desert outside the campground, but who, together with his (unnamed) mate, frequently visits campers for handouts of raw ground beef to supplement his natural diet of insects, tarantulas, lizards, snakes -including rattlesnakes- and rodents. Lacking much of the reticence common to roadrunners, Fred made an excellent subject for study.

The roadrunner, named for its habit of running along roads in front of horse-drawn carriages, is a member of the cuckoo family, a group of birds that includes anis and cuckoos in North America. One characteristic of the family is the occurrence of zygodactylous feet, where two toes point forward and two backward. Mention of the roadrunner name usually conjures up images of the arid Southwest where the birds are common residents. They range from North and central California eastward into southern Kansas, the far western parts of Arkansas and Louisiana, and extend southward throughout most of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and into Mexico, occupying a variety of arid habitats such as scrub deserts, mesquite groves, yucca and shortgrass prairies.

At first, when I followed Fred into the desert, his natural shyness reasserted itself. I quickly learned how the roadrunner performs its disappearing act. At the first sign of danger, it quickly tucks itself against the nearest piece of cover, be it a rock or clump of brittlebush, and freezes. The bird's cryptic coloration of streaky brown and white feathers is excellent, and once or twice I very nearly stepped on one while attempting to locate it. Another factor is the roadrunner's legendary speed. Capable of running at up to 18 mph flat out, it also has another mode of rapid transit; when attempting to evade detection, it flattens itself against the ground and scurries like an oversized mouse from one clump of vegetation to the next. Unless one is looking in exactly the right direction, the roadrunner’s movement is virtually undetectable.

Within a day or two, Fred had accepted me as part of the landscape, and I was able to follow him about his daily activities. It quickly became apparent that Fred was gathering food not intended for immediate consumption, and I was soon able to locate the nest site, a petticoat palm on the roadside. My first approaches to the nest evoked a new response from Fred, a modified version of the mouse-creep. In this instance, he would circle my feet at high speed while crouched low to the ground, then run off in a direction leading away from the nest, evidently a form of distraction display intended to divert predators from the nest. At the same time, he would utter a rapid-fire clacking sound made by quickly opening and closing his beak, a call known as bill-rolling. This didn’t seem to be a threat call; it appeared more to ensure that I saw him. . I retreated for a short distance until Fred no longer showed concern for my presence, then gradually closed on the nest at a rate that caused him no alarm. This approach was complicated by the fact that there was some human traffic within view of the site, as well as many ravens. Thus I took great care not to attract attention to the nest, which was located about six feet up in the tree. The nest, approximately one foot in diameter, was made of small sticks and lined with grasses and feathers. .

After three days of trying, reached the tree. On examining the nest, which was well hidden between the trunk of the palm and the masses of hanging dead fronds, I found the female, incubating four white eggs. Over the next few days, I observed the male spending much of his time collecting food for his mate. Occasionally, however, he would take a turn on the nest while the female went foraging. Once or twice they appeared together, searching for food. The female, who also frequented the campground, accepted me almost immediately.

Eleven days after I began observing Fred, all four eggs had hatched. Activity at the nest increased markedly, with both adults sharing foraging and brooding. At times, both parents were away from the nest simultaneously. On one of these occasions, I was privileged to observe a roadrunner in top gear. I was watching one of the birds foraging a few hundred yards from the nest, while the other one was off at the campsite in the other direction. A pair of ravens began circling the nest tree. The roadrunner took off like a missile, belly low to the ground, head and tail outstretched. I could see at once why roadrunners dismiss flight as scarcely necessary!

Occasionally I observed the female begging like a chick, crouched low with feathers fluffed out, making a wheezing call. Fred responded with a gift of food or a small stick or other nesting material, which was somewhat less enthusiastically received.

The second week after the eggs had hatched, the nest began to empty. The first two chicks to leave were never seen again, although one day I noticed a group of ravens attacking something on the ground several hundred feet from the nest. The roadrunners raced to the scene. By the time I arrived, the ravens were gone and there was nothing to see, but the roadrunners appeared to be quite upset.

The third chick to leave took up residence in cover about a quarter of a mile from the nest site, leaving the parents with their work cut out to keep both chicks adequately supplied. Matters were further complicated by the fact that the chick tended to move about from one bush to another within a large radius, which left the adult with the problem of locating its offspring in order to feed it. To accomplish this task, The adult approaches the general area in which it last encountered the chick and utters a special call consisting of from four to twelve sharp notes reminiscent of a woodpecker or perhaps a kookaburra. The chick responds with the bill-rolling call, thus identifying its location without having to leave the safety of its hiding place. This bill-rolling call seems to provide accurate directional information.

The spring of 1992 was the wettest on record in southern Nevada, resulting in a desert that bloomed in great profusion. Food was in abundance for the roadrunner family, along with the extra tit-bits provided by the campers. That spring I witnessed a comical encounter between Fred and one of his offspring. For several hours, Fred had been feeding minced lizard to one chick at a rapid pace. He then returned from the campground with a large beakfull of ground beef. This was too much for the bloated youngster. Each time Fred attempted to stuff the morsel into its beak, the chick turned its head firmly aside. Fred matched his offspring's reluctance with increasing determination until, frustrated by its ingratitude, he stood on its back, pinning it to the ground, and tried to force the hamburger down its throat. The chick responded by thrashing its head about wildly and crying "naaaa, naaaa, naaaa!" Eventually, the chick managed to wriggle free and dive for the dense cover of a catclaw acacia, while Fred uncomprehendingly swallowed the meat and trotted off in search of more.

Later, on the same day that the fourth chick left the nest, I was surprised to see one of the adults carrying a piece of nesting material. I quickly discovered a second nest under construction in a palm only fifty yards from the first nest. Fred began to reaffirm his ownership of both territory and mate by occasional territorial displays. Standing on a small rock, his beak pointed vertically towards the ground, tail held low, he would utter a descending series of about seven low-pitched coos, a betrayal of his cuckoo affiliations. During this display, as at any time of excitement, the feathers behind Fred's eye were parted to reveal a red, white and blue skin patch. Fred's crest also seemed to reflect mood changes; for instance, it was usually erected when he approached a chick with food. The female also has the eyepatch and a smaller crest, but was less demonstrative. She did not perform territorial displays.

Once, while I was sitting with the female, both of us sheltered from the hot sun in the meagre shade of nearby creosote bushes, I heard Fred's territorial song. To my ears, it was identical to the call that I had, by now, often heard him make. This time, however, the effect on his mate was galvanising. She sped off like an arrow in the direction of the sound. I followed, wondering if the call had perhaps been made by an intruder. By the time I caught up with her, they were already mating. Following roadrunner tradition, Fred had brought her a gift of a green caterpillar to be offered during copulation. While he managed to hang on to the morsel throughout the special event, the female never took the caterpillar and he subsequently ate it himself.

Four days later, an egg appeared in the new nest, to be followed at day-and-a-half intervals by more, until there were finally seven—yet the two chicks from the last brood were barely learning to fend for themselves! Sadly, my time with the roadrunners was at an end. I could see that they had busy times ahead. Those long legs were going to get plenty of exercise.

 

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