Greater roadrunner

Where does the greater roadrunner live?

Home: Deserts, dry grassland and scrub of the American Southwest.

In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Mexico.

Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.

The short profile

Fully grown: 52–62 cm long, wingspan 43–61 cm. It weighs about 0.38 kilograms. On the menu: meat.

The story behind it

A roadrunner spends nearly its whole life on foot. Its legs are powerful, its long tail works like a rudder in fast turns, and it can hold about 30 kilometres per hour across open desert. It eats almost anything it can catch: grasshoppers, scorpions, mice, small birds and young rattlesnakes, which it beats against a stone before swallowing them head first. Desert nights are cold, so on winter mornings the bird turns its back to the sun and lifts its feathers to bare a patch of black skin that soaks up the heat. The cartoon call is invented; a real roadrunner coos in a low, mournful series that carries far across the sand.

Find it on the globe

Greater roadrunner is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.