Birds of Central Oklahoma

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Greater Roadrunner, adult
Adult Photo by Polinova. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Greater Roadrunner

Geococcyx californianus

Here all year.

Recorded by Paul Marvin. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, via xeno-canto, trimmed and volume evened out.

Look for

  1. A streaky brown and white bird with a very long tail. The tail has white spots.
  2. A shaggy crest that goes up and down. Look for bright yellow eyes and a long, strong bill.
  3. Strong legs made for running. It runs along the ground and hardly ever flies.

A little about it

Roadrunners are known as birds of the desert in the Southwest. Over time, they've spread east through Oklahoma and on into Arkansas and Louisiana. You can see them here all year.

A roadrunner can run up to 20 miles per hour. It flies only when it has to. To hunt, it walks fast and looks around. Then it dashes ahead and grabs its food with its bill. It eats lizards, snakes, mice, and big bugs, and even scorpions and small birds. Almost all of its food is animals, but it eats a little fruit and some seeds too.

Roadrunners are curious about people. One may wag its tail from side to side while it watches you. On cool nights, a roadrunner lets its body cool down and gets slow. In the morning, it lifts its feathers to show a patch of dark skin on its back. The sun warms the patch, and that warms up the bird.

In spring, a male may carry a lizard or a small snake to win a mate. The nest is a pile of sticks in a bush or a low tree, and it's sometimes lined with bits of snakeskin. The female lays 3 to 5 white eggs. The young leave the nest at about 3 weeks old, and their parents keep feeding them and teaching them to hunt for weeks after that.

Fun fact

A roadrunner can jump straight up to grab a bird flying over its head. It has even been seen catching hummingbirds this way.

When it's here

Taller bars mean more sightings. Most often seen in July.

How big

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20 to 24 inches, counting the long tail. About the size of a crow. Its long tail makes it look even longer.

Where to look

Open country with a few bushes. Roadrunners like room to run, so look along the sides of roads.

  • Fields and roadsides

People have spotted it at Lake Stanley Draper, Arcadia Lake, Lake Thunderbird State Park.

Could it be something else?

  • Brown Thrasher

    Also brown with a long tail and yellow eyes, and it looks for food on the ground. It's only about half as long. Its back is plain reddish brown, with stripes underneath.

Where these facts come from