Greater roadrunner of New Mexico. Greater roadrunner The greater roadrunner ("Geococcyx californianus") is a long-legged bird in the cuckoo family, Cuculidae, from Southwestern United States and Mexico. The Latin name means "Californian earth-cuckoo". Along with the lesser roadrunner, it is one of two species in the roadrunner genus "Geococcyx". This roadrunner is also known as the chaparral cock, ground cuckoo, and snake killer. The roadrunner is about long, has a wingspan and weighs . It stands around tall and is the largest cuckoo of the Americas. Roadrunners have four toes on each zygodactyl foot; two face forward, and two face backward. The
The Painted Bird The Painted Bird The Painted Bird is a 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński which describes World War II as seen by a boy, considered a "Gypsy or Jewish stray," wandering about small villages scattered around an unspecified country in Eastern Europe. The story was originally introduced by Kosiński as autobiographical. It was only upon its publication by Houghton Mifflin that he quietly refrained from making such claims any further. Assumed by reviewers to be a memoir of a Jewish survivor and witness to the Holocaust telling the supposed true story of his search for the deported family, the book received