Introduction

Paisano, Chaparral Cock, Snake Killer, and Medicine Bird are a few of the many colorful names bestowed on this conspicuous but enigmatic terrestrial cuckoo of the American Southwest. Yet anyone who has seen the Greater Roadrunner scuttling through desert scrub, trotting down the roadside, or calling mournfully from a high fence post needs no elaborate name to remember it. Armed with a battery of physiological and behavioral adaptations, the Greater Roadrunner thrives in arid regions but is equally at home in the Colorado foothills or among the loblolly pines of western Louisiana. An opportunistic predator, it feeds on snakes, lizards, spiders, scorpions, insects, birds, rodents, and bats, which it beats repeatedly against a hard substrate before consuming. During severe food shortages, the Greater Roadrunner may eat its own young. Greater Roadrunners are monogamous, maintain a long-term pair bond, and mutually defend a large, multipurpose territory. Each spring and summer, they renew their pair bond through a series of elaborate courtship displays in which the male bows and prances, wags his tail, and offers nesting material and food items to his attending mate. Both male and female incubate the eggs and feed and protect the young through a breeding season that lasts several months. Historically, the Greater Roadrunner has been persecuted by ranchers and hunters who believe that it consumes the young and eggs of popular game bird species. Despite the persistence of illegal hunting, the Greater Roadrunner faces no serious declines in population numbers and continues to expand its range northward and eastward into new habitats.

Detailed studies have been made of Greater Roadrunner vocalizations and courtship behavior (Whitson 1971, 1975), weather-dependent behavior (Beal 1978b), physiology and thermoregulation (Calder and Schmidt-Nielsen 1967, Ohmart et al. 1970, Lasiewski et al. 1971, Ohmart and Lasiewski 1971, Ohmart 1972, Dunson et al. 1976, Vehrencamp 1982), and population ecology and habitat use in south Texas (Folse 1974, Folse and Arnold 1978) and west Texas (JMH unpubl. data). In addition, a well-illustrated book by Meinzer (1993) provides an excellent overview of Greater Roadrunner natural history.