Killdeer - for real

Isn't nature amazing?! We were out working in the garden on the first warm Saturday of the year and Bug noticed some baby killdeer in the garden. We had tilled the dirt a few days previously so there must have been lots of good seeds and maybe some little bugs for them to eat. It took me a bit to spot the little guys, but there were three of them running all over the garden. After Bug took some pictures, we loaded some stuff in the pickup and then I tried to find the babies to take more pictures, but couldn't find them. I could see mama off away from us acting like she was hurt, so I figured we must be close to the babies. Sure enough, Steelhead spotted one of them not 2 feet from where I was standing. Bug saw another one and we came in to get a closer look. They looked like they were fake, even when we were just inches from them. They didn't move a muscle, they didn't even blink their eyes - chickens blink, (from the bottom eyelid - up) do killdeer? Luke gently touched one with a stick and it wouldn't budge. They were so well camouflaged it was truly amazing! Click on the picture to enlarge it and you can see the baby right in the middle of the picture.

Look close, he's there. We thought they looked like dirty cotton balls with legs. They sure could run fast!

The mama was frantic! She was running all over the place making all different kinds of noises. She would do the typical fake-a-broken-wing to lure us away from her babies, while papawas flying all around dive bombing us to keep us away from the babies. We left the garden for a few minutes to haul some junk off in the pickup, and when we came back, mama had moved the babies... across the canal. I have no idea how she got them to cross the canal, but we saw them running off, following their mama as far away from the funny farm as possible!!! Killdeer can't swim can they? They were too young to fly, I wonder if she somehow carried them over on her back - no idea!

Oh, as a side note, just today I saw two different families of killdeer in our yard again. One group of babies were taking a bath in my sprinkler and the other family was back in my garden.