Kill-dee, kill-dee, killdeer

Hey, the sun is a plus on this cold March day! Margaret Madsen photo

I ended my last blog mentioning Killdeers in March in the Okanagan. This was rather depressing since the mercury again dipped down to minus 30 overnight here in Naicam and the possibility of seeing Killdeer here anytime soon is very remote! So once again, this photo taken yesterday has nothing to do with what I plan to ramble on about today - i.e. Killdeer.

I love hearing chickadees calling their name, but believe me, I am ready to hear Killdeer doing the same. I'm sure it will come come as no surprise when I tell you that that the scientific name for Killdeer is  Charadrius vociferus. How appropriate because this very vocal bird calls constantly as it dips and swoops over the fields.

The Killdeer is probably the best known of all "broken wing" birds for feigning injury in order to draw predators away from its nest. The first time I saw a Killdeer pretending to be injured is now more than 60+ years ago when I was a young child, but it still is vivid in my mind. "Ooh, poor bird" was my reaction and I ran after it, trying to catch it. When it would pause, seemingly to rest from its struggle to escape me, I would pounce and it would leap out of the way and stagger on calling pathetically, dragging its wing, luring me further and further from its nest. When it suddenly leapt into the air wing, miraculously healed, I felt duped and vowed next time to look for the nest and not be fooled.

Actually, it was many, many years later that I did see a Killdeer's nest. Our daughter Karen was exercising her horse in the riding ring when, on making her first diagonal across the ring, she said that a Killdeer suddenly materialized from the sand and challenged her horse. The bird puffed itself up and ran at the horse with threatening determination. From her seat in the saddle, she spotted the nest and called to us to come see.

The nest was simply a small, shallow depression in the sand, neatly tiled with tiny pebbles. Four sand colored eggs mottled with brown rested on the pebbles. They were so well camouflaged that we could have walked by dozens of times without seeing the nest or its contents. Karl pounded in four wooden stakes to mark its location and warn riders and tractors dragging harrows to avoid the spot.

The bird books say incubation is 24 to 28 days and all the eggs hatch within hours of one another. Apparently the babies being peeping inside the shells several hours before they hatch and they listen to the sounds their parents make. Both mom and dad take turns sitting on the nest.

When the young hatched in the riding ring, they were fuzzy ping pong balls of sand-colored fluff on toothpick legs. When they ran from spot to spot, they really looked like balls rolling. But the instant a parent gave the alarm cry, they would freeze and shut their bright dark eyes and magically, they would disappear. It was uncanny how well camouflaged they were.