A Kildeer Experience

It was February here on the north Oregon coast. The chill winds were still blowing almost daily, and though the sun would come out, it did little to warm the ground. Around here the planting can’t really begin in earnest until late May. It’s simply too cold and wet.

We live in a new development that stalled out with the economic downturn in 2008. Where there are eventually to be more than 30 houses, there are still only five. The dogs love it. To them it is a huge dog park they have all to themselves. With the elk and deer, which still come through regularly, there is plenty for them to roll in. Dog heaven!

It was while running the dogs on the far side of the development that I heard the call of the kildeer. There were two of them conspicuously keening and running back and forth on the other side of the road. From what I knew of killdeer, their behavior was deliberate: They were trying to draw us away from their nest on the ground. Kildeer are common shorebirds in North America and nest in nothing more than an indentation in the ground in open scrub or gravel. So for me this was a challenge. Where was the nest?

I expected it to at least have some grass growing around it, but when I finally found it (the dogs were now confined to areas away from that side of the plats), I was amazed. Where the contractor had at some point dumped extra cement, maybe from hosing out a truck, on the top of this lumpy mound of concrete, there were two eggs. Their mottled tan and black coloring blended perfectly with the concrete rendering them virtually invisible.

Since momma wasn’t sitting on them, yet, I did some research on the web. Not until all her eggs are laid will the mother bird begin brooding, which means that they will all hatch at the same time: A critical factor when you’re on the ground exposed to predators! Not only that, but the young ones come out of the eggs literally ready to rumble. They look like fuzzy versions of their parents, their legs are strong, and in less than 24 hours they are mobile. The camouflage that serves the eggs so well also serves the chicks. Once they take off, they’re impossible to spot. And of course the parents are ever vigilant.

Walking past the nest every day for a week, I watched two more eggs appear and began to count the days as the mother began incubation of a total of four eggs. In that same week, construction on another home began. With constant noise and traffic, as well as people stopping with their kids to see the nest, the mother was often forced off it to perform the traditional kildeer distraction tactic: The “broken wing” dance designed to draw would-be egg thieves to a bigger meal. Once the predators are drawn away, the kildeer simply flies away and returns to the nest when the threat has passed.

Watching all this activity around her nest was distressing me as much as it distressed them.

A Close Call

When construction is in progress in your neighborhood you get used to the constant hum of equipment. About 15 days into her 22 to 28-day incubation period, I was driving out of the neighborhood queued up behind a small heavy-duty front loader. To my astonishment the driver veered off the road toward a pile of gravel and was heading straight for the nest! I leaned on the horn and, with a look of complete bewilderment on his face, the driver stopped. When I showed him the nest, he couldn’t tell what I was pointing at until the mother moved off it, and because of the camouflaging, I had to take him right up to it. We marked it with planks, and though momma’s day was likely very noisy as he made trips back and forth to haul the gravel out of there, her eggs were spared.

Hatching Day

Day 22, and I started watching the nest like an anxious parent. The weather was not cooperating for the little family, at all, and a few days before, it had rained and stormed as if we had set the clocks back to November. On Day 23 I found one of the eggs rolled out of the nest. The others were undisturbed.

Finally on Day 26 I realized there was an extra pair of legs under momma. The little one wriggled under her as I drove by, and after putting my groceries away, I grabbed the camera and went to see if I could get some pictures. It was late in the afternoon, and they seemed to be settling for the night. The hatchling was tiny and fuzzy, but its legs were disproportionately huge. I figured he was the first and that by morning the rest would arrive.

But they never did. I captured a few shots of the one as he took off on foot following his parents, and though the nest was still being defended the next day, they were gone the day after. Sadly only one of their eggs hatched. I brought home the unhatched eggs and placed them in a flower pot on my front porch, where they immediately vanished against the backdrop of the potting soil.

Within a couple months the ground warmed up, the annual explosion of blossoms heralded the start of the growing season, but the kildeer had moved on. The dogs went back to romping wherever their noses take them and occasionally would sniff around the old nest. No doubt the family’s scent still lingered.

It’s a miracle that this species manages to survive raising a family through wind and weather, elk and deer, crows, hawks and humans. Being a part of their annual ritual was a unique experience.