Killdeer
At Illinois Beach State Park on June 14th we noticed a lot of clutter in one place, as you see in the first photograph. Flitting in and out of that clutter was a bird that I learned is a killdeer, Charadrius vociferus.
The “cage” of dead branches rising from the beach sand obviously wasn’t natural but had been placed there by people. When we got closer we could guess at the reason for the uprights: to mark the killdeer’s nest and keep walkers from accidentally treading on it, given how easily a passerby might take the eggs for just a few more stones out of the thousands on the beach.
© 2016 Steven Schwartzman
The eggs are well disguised but mean watchful steps are needed. What an awful sound that crunch would be. That people make those “cages” is outstanding.
Steve Gingold
August 24, 2016 at 5:29 AM
I’d seen speckled eggs before, but I’d never imagined how well camouflaged they’d be among rounded stones strewn across a beach. And yes, I’d hate for any unobservant walker to suddenly hear that crunch.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 6:28 AM
I wrote about my spotting a killdeer a few months ago- what marvelous birds!
DailyMusings
August 24, 2016 at 6:37 AM
I found it:
https://dailymusing57.com/tag/killdeer/
This was a first for me, too. I even saw the bird put on its fluttering fake broken wing decoy act.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 6:43 AM
amazing what birds are wired to do to protect themselves and their young
DailyMusings
August 24, 2016 at 9:03 AM
It is. I have trouble imagining how these birds originally came to put on that act and then how they’ve retained it.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 1:36 PM
How exciting! I see kildeer from time to time — my first bird photo with my new camera was of a kildeer — but I’ve never found a nest. The babies are wonderful. They hatch with their eyes open, and as soon as their feathers are dry, away they go, running at speeds I still can’t believe. They look for all the world like golf balls on long, spindly legs. I’ve seen them in the grass at one of the marinas where I work, and in a parking lot in West Columbia. They don’t seem averse to setting up their home around people.
shoreacres
August 24, 2016 at 6:53 AM
It was the upright branches that drew us to the nest. I doubt we would have noticed it otherwise. From your comment about newly hatched killdeer, you might have been close to a nest too.
What you say about not being averse to people seems to have been true of the bird at Illinois Beach State Park, where people come walking by every so often. At the same time, this killdeer did try to draw us away from its nest.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 7:10 AM
Double consonants strike again, I see. It’s killdeer, not kildeer. Through all the reading I’ve done on killdeer over the years, I never saw that. In any event, I was thinking about the birds this morning, and remembered this famous incident of a hunter who made a different sort of mistake.
shoreacres
August 24, 2016 at 10:43 AM
I can’t remember if I knew about that incident from 1994.
If it’s any consolation to you, the name of the bird has occasionally appeared as kildeer,
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/kildeer
and there’s a town named Kildeer in Lake County, Illinois. That’s the county Melissa is in.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 1:47 PM
I love seeing eggs, and it’s so rare to see eggs in the wild. I love the way Constantin Brancusi paid homage to the shape of an egg in his “Essential Egg” sculptures. https://100swallows.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/brancusis-essential-egg/. “His philosophy of simplifying a shape to its very essence has affected all our contemporary thought on shape,” says Slobodkin.
Ariana Vincent
August 24, 2016 at 7:07 AM
I’m glad to see my subject today egged you on to bring in the work of Brancusi. I’ve seen some of his pieces, in the Met I think, and elsewhere, and they do seem to simplify shapes to their essence. I’m ever on the lookout for abstract shapes in nature.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 7:39 AM
By the way, although I’ve often enough photographed insect eggs, this was one of the rare times when I found bird eggs in the wild. I believe the only previous ones I showed here were four years ago:
https://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/a-light-encounter/
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 7:52 AM
Good that some people first walk with their eyes open and then not just walk by such a nest!
Pit
August 24, 2016 at 8:22 AM
I have no idea who marked that nest like that or how long before I encountered it, but someone was civic-minded, biologically speaking.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 2:36 PM
Love your discovery, I really appreciate that others on the beech did something to protect the eggs.
Charlie@Seattle Trekker
August 24, 2016 at 1:19 PM
Hi, Charlie. Yes, those people, whoever they were (assuming a plural here), did their good deed for the day.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 7:27 PM
Love the fact that someone has taken the time to protect those eggs.
Raewyn's Photos
August 24, 2016 at 1:41 PM
A bunch of people here feel the same way, Raewyn.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 7:28 PM
Outstanding camouflage, both for the bird in your first photo and for the eggs among the stones with no nest to give them away. Thank goodness that there are other folks out there who go out of their way to help to protect them when they are in an area endangered by people.
krikitarts
August 24, 2016 at 8:39 PM
It is hard to see the bird in the first photo, isn’t it? I wish I could’ve gotten a closer picture of it, but that didn’t happen. In contrast, I was fortunate to be able to stand right by the four eggs and get a good downward view of them.
Every commenter so far has been vicariously grateful for the markers that warn walkers where the nest is.
Steve Schwartzman
August 24, 2016 at 9:32 PM
I’m surprised the beach was open for walkers during breeding season, actually. It’s good someone was attentive, particularly given the incredible camouflage.
Susan Scheid
August 26, 2016 at 8:54 PM
I never thought about the possibility that the beach might close during breeding season. I suspect it would be difficult to enforce, given that the Illinois Beach Resort sits on the beach right in the middle of the state park.
Steve Schwartzman
August 26, 2016 at 9:29 PM