This week’s bird is the greater roadrunner, another member of the cuckoo family.  It lives in scrubby areas of the US and Mexico, in an ecological region referred to as “Aridoamerica.”  Like last week’s bird it is capable of brief flight, but prefers to engage the tiny motor in its ass and sustain running speeds of 32 kilometers per hour, about 20 MPH.  The roadrunner is an opportunistic predator that eats small arachnids, lizards, insects and mammals which it chases down. One account from an early western arrival to the area said that if it encountered a snake, the roadrunner would place cactus spines around it in such a way that escape was impossible.  Pretty metal, tiny bird.  Pretty. Metal.  

Greater road runners mate for life, collaborate on building a nest and raising chicks.  “A unique feature of the greater roadrunner is that mated couples will continue their copulation rituals long after the need for egg fertilization. This factor is believed to contribute to the couple’s pair bond maintenance.”  This passage from the wiki article is pretty sterile, but what it means is the birds keep hitting on each other even after they have sealed the deal, isn’t that cute?  They stick together because they keep up expressions of affection.  

The greater roadrunner is diurnal, and hides from the sun at midday.  At night it slows its metabolism, dropping its body temperature 11 degrees F (6 C).  In the morning it can sun itself for several hours to bring its temperature back up.  It gets rid of heat both through its skin and by breathing, it sometimes pants to speed the process up.  Like many (but not all) cuckoos, it will leave eggs in the nests of other birds for them to raise.  Have a good weekend, everyone!  Meep-meep!

Links: http://tinyurl.com/2p9prkp4, http://tinyurl.com/5dw5kycr