Killdeer nesting on bare ground

The gravel along the Westminster trail crunches underfoot, each step announcing your presence to every creature within earshot. In late spring, this seemingly barren stretch between the canal and the open fields becomes a theater of deception. The killdeer have chosen this harsh landscape for their most vulnerable act: raising young on the open ground.

A killdeer nest is barely a nest at all. Four speckled eggs rest in a shallow scrape, sometimes lined with a few pebbles or bits of dried grass, sometimes holding nothing but the eggs themselves against the earth. The birds select parking lots, gravel paths, baseball diamonds, and construction sites. They choose exposure over shelter, trusting in camouflage and performance over concealment. The eggs blend so perfectly with their surroundings that you could walk within arm's length and see nothing but stones.

When a killdeer detects a threat near its nest, it launches into one of the most convincing performances in the bird world. The adult bird moves away from the nest site, dragging one wing as if broken, calling in distress, stumbling forward just close enough to hold your attention. The broken wing display pulls predators and people alike away from the hidden eggs. The bird stays just out of reach, always moving farther from the nest, maintaining the illusion of an easy meal until the threat has moved a safe distance away. Then the wing heals instantly. The killdeer takes flight, circles back, and settles near its eggs as if nothing happened. This deception works on foxes, dogs, children, and adults who have seen it dozens of times but still find themselves following the apparently injured bird.

The killdeer's choice of nesting habitat reflects a calculated risk. Ground nests face constant danger from predators, weather, and human activity. But open ground offers advantages that dense cover cannot. The adult birds can spot approaching threats from a distance. They have room to perform their distraction displays. The eggs receive direct warmth from the sun, reducing the time adults must spend incubating. When the chicks hatch, they can run within hours, following their parents to feeding areas where insects gather in the short grass and muddy edges of the canal.

During late spring in Westminster, the killdeer work the edges where water meets land. They probe the soft mud for invertebrates, their bills moving quickly and precisely. The chicks, covered in downy feathers that match the mottled ground, follow close behind their parents, learning to find food in the narrow zone between the flowing water and the dry earth. Their legs appear too long for their bodies, but those legs carry them quickly across uneven ground and through shallow water where aquatic insects emerge in increasing numbers as the season warms.

The killdeer's survival strategy depends on this landscape remaining open and disturbed. They need the bare ground that other birds avoid. Construction sites, mowed fields, and graveled areas provide the habitat where their camouflage works best. In Westminster, they find these conditions along the canal trails, in the margins between developed areas and open space, in places where human activity has created the scattered stones and short vegetation that killdeer require.

Step quietly along the trail now and listen for the sharp call that gives this bird its name. If you hear it, stop and look carefully at the ground around you. Somewhere within fifty feet, four spotted eggs rest in a scrape so shallow it barely interrupts the surface of the earth. The parent bird may be watching you, ready to begin its performance if you venture too close. The warm air carries the scent of new growth from the canal-side vegetation, and the late spring light illuminates each piece of gravel with equal clarity, making the hidden eggs invisible among ten thousand stones that look exactly like them.