Killdeer are common ground-nesting birds of open country. They belong to a group known as shorebirds, although they are one of the least water-associated of all shorebirds. They are slender with long wings and tail and are dark brown above, white below and have two black breast bands.
All the other birds in the group have a single breastband. The brown face is marked with black and white patches. They have a red eye ring. Rusty tail feathers are seen in flight. Their high, plaintive kill-dee call sounds like “kill-deer,” hence the name.
They spend much of their time on the ground, stopping to look around, then walking on. The nest is a shallow depression scraped in the ground or gravel. Bits of sticks or leaves may be added to the nest. Killdeers have nested along our gravel driveway several times.
Killdeer Nests
Eggs, usually four, are rounded at one end and pointed at the other, with the pointed ends facing each other at the center of the nest. Eggs are pale brown with darker splotches and blend with the soil or gravel. They are large because the young are precocial.
Upon hatching, baby killdeers are feathered and can feed themselves, just like baby chicks or ducklings. They usually leave the nest in a day or two. In the picture of the 4 chicks in the nest, the white spot at the tip of each beak is an egg tooth. It’s a temporary sharp projection the chick uses to penetrate the eggshell from inside to break out.
Adult birds often pretend to have a broken wing when the nest is approached. They will run away from the nest dragging a wing to draw a predator away.
One day I was visiting with our neighbor along his driveway, and he asked if I had seen the road runner. I confessed I had not. While we were talking a killdeer went by and he said, “There goes one now.” Ahh! they do go up and down the road, but I was thinking more of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. “Beep, Beep.”
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