Return of the Roadrunners
Baby, they are born to run
Spring is in the air: the Brewer’s sparrows burble their frothy song, the desert greens up, humans chase their recycling bins down the road in the howling March wind, and the roadrunners make their reappearance.
Roadrunners pop up on warm winter days and don’t entirely disappear, but it makes sense that they aren’t out and about—the lizards, antelope ground squirrels, and baby birds they relish aren’t around.
The air cools at night, even in the summer, and roadrunners tuck themselves into rock crevices or shrubs and chill for the night.
Could it be that they hibernate in the winter? They don’t fly very well and even if they are accomplished runners, they are sprinters, not marathoners, and they aren’t running south. Only a few birds are known to hibernate, including the whip-poor-will and some hummingbirds, whose body temperatures can drop to 50°. Maybe roadrunners hibernate too.
When it warms, roadrunners splay their feathers and bask in the sun. They seem to cope well with summer heat, and I think roadrunners are the most reptilian birds. They make it easy to understand that birds are dinosaurs—after all, one paleontologist called Tyrannosaurus rex “the 20,000-pound roadrunner from hell.”
If you’ve seen a roadrunner murder a cactus wren nestling or wrestle a rattler, you know how fierce they are. Their quick courage inspires southwestern Natives to be nimble and persistent. And according to Chemehuevi elder Gertrude Leivas (1918-1991), roadrunners gave their name to her people:
When we saw the land full of mesquite beans, we rushed down into the valley like a roadrunner, and this is what Chemehuevi means: nose in the air like a roadrunner.1
Pretty soon roadrunners will start mating—we have a male who hangs around on the roof and sobs like a puppy whining into our vents. He’ll spend hours running around the house with a whiptail lizard dangling from his beak. His mate—it seems roadrunners mate for life—can’t resist and before long, we have two or three tiny roadrunners clustering in the creosote.
Tell us your roadrunner stories. I know you have them! And happy spring—good luck capturing your trash can heading for Highway 62.
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From The Greater Roadrunner by James W. Cornett. Palm Springs: Nature Trail Press. Second edition 2019.
Love learning about Roadrunners - thank you!
BEEP ! BEEP! They are so friendly and entertaining !