ANOTHER KILLDEER NEST

Dickie and I discovered another killdeer nest the other morning. As I've mentioned before, they're not easy to spot - even when you know about where they are. Just the day before we spotted the nest which is in the front yard of a home in our neighborhood, I had said to a man who lived across the street from the nest that I knew there was a nest there someplace, because the bird was always there and was doing her broken wing act whenever we walked by. Then, lo and behold, the next day I took a careful look at the place where I first spotted her and there was the nest with four eggs in it not more than five feet from the edge of the sidewalk, in plain view.

Your heart has to go out to these beautiful creatures who don't seem to realize how risky it is to put their nest in plain view in the front yard of somebody's home, where cats and dogs are bound to pass by occasionally. Somehow they seem to manage. The first nest we saw this year hatched four live birds, two of which are still hopping around in the schoolyard when the kids aren't around and in the nearby park when they have to escape any other danger.

I took a picture of the new nest this morning. Here it is:

I'll let you know if the birds make it.


A BIG WEEK FOR SPORTS

You'll have to go a long way to find a better week for sports fans than this present one. The final game of the NCAA basketball tournament will be played this evening between Illinois and North Carolina. Dickie and I are rooting for Illinois. For baseball fans there's the opening of the Major League baseball season this week. I'm hoping my Cardinals will get off to a good start. For golfers there's the Masters Tournament that begins on Thursday down in Augusta, Georgia, where they tell us the dogwoods and azaleas are bursting in bloom. I'm a Tiger Woods fan when it comes to that game.