Walk the trails around Albuquerque long enough and, while you may never hear a meep-meep or get bowled over in a blur of legs, you’re bound to spot a roadrunner or two kicking up dust. These little guys are all over the scrublands around here, earning their title as the state bird of New Mexico.

Roadrunners are in the cuckoo family, a diverse grouping of over a hundred species living across several continents. Since the family includes tree-dwellers as well as terrestrial birds, the species that dominates in the American Southwest is called variously the New World ground cuckoo, the chaparral cock, or simply the greater roadrunner. So how do they really fare against wily coyotes, let alone creepy-crawlers like tarantulas and rattlesnakes?