Roadrunner in Sonoran scrub
— — the bird that decided not to fly.
Not only on a wall.
“The Greater Roadrunner, the desert cuckoo who runs instead of flies. A two-foot bird with a long pinned tail, a streaked brown body, and a blue and orange patch behind the eye that most people never see because they only see the bird from behind, going fast. In Sonoran scrub the roadrunner works the low wash edges at first light and last light, hunting lizards, snakes, and the occasional unlucky hummingbird. The cartoon got the speed right and almost nothing else.
Roadrunner in Sonoran scrub, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) is a ground-dwelling member of the cuckoo family, resident across the American Southwest and northern Mexico. In Arizona it is most associated with the Sonoran Desert, the warm-desert biome that covers roughly 100,000 square miles south and west of the Mogollon Rim. The bird stands about ten inches at the shoulder, runs to roughly two feet long including the tail, and is the state bird of New Mexico but a familiar dooryard presence across southern Arizona. Saguaro National Park, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and most foothill neighbourhoods around Tucson and Phoenix are reliable places to see one.
Roadrunners can fly, briefly and badly. They prefer the ground and have been clocked running at about 20 miles per hour, fast enough to run down lizards and small rattlesnakes, which they kill by hammering against rocks. They cool themselves by panting and by exposing a dark patch of skin on the back to the morning sun, a heat-saving behaviour shared with few other North American birds. In Sonoran scrub the working hours are first light and the hour before dusk; midday is spent in shade under creosote, palo verde, or mesquite.
Roadrunners hold territory year-round in Arizona and breed from spring into early summer, with pairs often raising two broods in a good year. The nest is a flat platform of sticks in a cholla or mesquite, three to ten feet up, lined with feathers, snake skins, and dry grass. Clutches run three to six eggs. Chicks fledge in about three weeks. Sonoran summer rains, which run from early July through mid-September, are the easiest stretch of the year to see a pair working a wash edge with juveniles in tow.