Killdeer   

  The first thing we heard after opening our car doors at Cottonwood Marsh was the raucous calls of killdeer. That was another spring experience for our morning. The newly arrived killdeer seemed to be wasting no time and getting right to the business of courtship. Killdeer have an interesting natural history. Their nest is called a scrape which is just about what you might think. It is simply an area in on the gravelly ground which they scrape to make a slight depression. They will sometimes add a minimal amount of nest lining before laying four eggs (which look just like stones). Their young are precocial meaning they can walk and feed themselves almost immediately after hatching. You can imagine that a bird like the killdeer with minimal investment in a nest and precocial young could easily have several batches of young in a summer. Killdeer in Colorado can have as many as three broods.

 Killdeer Plover Broken Wing Dance - Protecting their nest

Blue Herons

©Steve Frye
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