NESTING KILLDEER!!

It's almost summer, but we're looking back to an April 10 walk at the South Hero Marsh Trail - and an  exciting little story. 

The trailhead is in a lot that's used by the town highway department to store gravel, sand, etc. Our first indication that the parking lot was also being used as a nursery was an agitated Killdeer, drooping one wing, fanning its beautiful rusty and white tail.

The bird was doing a distraction display, trying to get us - two big dangerous-looking creatures - away from something!

Then we saw a second Killdeer, several feet away from the displaying bird. This one was atop a small mound of gravel, looking tense and alert.

As it stood up, we could see at least two eggs!

Killdeer don't build what most of us think of as nests. They just make little scrapes in sand or dirt or gravel, choosing locations like golf courses, driveways, and even flat gravel roofs. Sometimes they add little pebbles or sticks or bits of trash to their nest. 

This couple had chosen an uncomfortable-looking pile of rocks.

It's not a good idea to publicize the location of nests, so we waited to do this post until the pair of Killdeer had a chance to finish incubating their eggs. Killdeer young are "precocial"; that is, they're fully feathered when they hatch, and they can walk as soon as their feathers dry.

About two weeks after our walk, we learned that the pair was still there and that someone, perhaps the South Hero road crew, had placed warning flags around the nest so visitors wouldn't drive over it.