Roadrunners may look tough, but they are attentive and meticulous parents. During the spring, a male roadrunner can often be seen carrying a lizard or small snake as an offering to attract a mate. Although they spend most of their lives on the ground, the parents will build a nest up in a tree where the female lays four to five nearly spherical white eggs. The parents share the incubating duties and once the eggs hatch, they are both busy feeding their voracious youngsters. The chicks are ready to leave the nest when they are around three weeks old, but their parents will continue to teach them how to hunt for several more weeks.
Roadrunners often live in extreme climates and are uniquely adapted to conserve energy.
On cool nights, they lower their body temperature and become lethargic. In the morning, they use a built-in heat exchanger, a patch of dark skin on the back between the wings, to help absorb the warmth of the rising sun. They manipulate their feathers to expose the patch, then find a suitable sunning place and wait for their body to reach normal temperature. Greater roadrunners prefer open country with little brush to slow them down. That is why they can often be seen along roadsides.