It finally happened. Yesterday when we walked by, the mama killdeer was sitting all fluffed out on the nest - like she had something to hide - and she did. All four eggs hatched. From a distance of, perhaps, a hundred feet, I saw one little bird running around; although, when we got up close, he was gone - perhaps hidden under his mama's skirts, er, wings. I took the picture below. The male killdeer walked right up and tried to run us off with as mean a look as he could muster, but I stuck around long enough to get this picture:
I didn't have the heart to stick around any longer yesterday, since the parent birds were obviously upset that we were there. We did walk around the block and, when we came back, both parent birds were walking around and all I could make out in the nest was feathers. Again, the birds were upset, so I left without taking a picture - which I now regret. This morning, when we came back by, the nest was empty and the birds were gone. We hunted around a bit and finally spotted two mature killdeers in the field across the busy road. I sneaked around behind a wooden fence and finally got within about 40 or 50 feet of them when I spotted the two babies in the picture below. Don't know if there were any more. The parent birds were lucky to get even two day-old babies across that road without getting them run over by a car or truck anyway. Now, if they can just keep the horses and crows that live in that field away from those babies for a few days, the little ones might even get big enough to fly. It amazes me how quickly these birds mature. Imagine a human baby getting up and running across a busy road after one day of living!
That's the latest in the continuing saga of Dickie and Carl and the killdeer. Keep tuned!
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