If you’re like me, then you’re a creature of routine. Morning has a routine, noon has a routine and so on until I finally turn out the light and go to sleep. Routines make us comfortable and help us get mundane chores done, but sometimes we are forced out of comfortable patterns and into unfamiliar territory. I think it’s probably safe to say that almost everyone reading this column has experienced at least a smidgen of what I’m talking about in recent days.
It is often in times like these that I turn to the greatest of all keepers of routines: nature. Whatever may be going on in the “human” world, Mother Nature has her eye on the schedule of events for every other living thing on the planet and I’m happy to say that everything appears to be comfortably normal out in the natural world.
For instance, there is the inexplicable early arrival of killdeer that continues to perplex and befuddle me year after year. The killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) is a member of the plover family, which is made up of species that we often refer to as “shorebirds.” This is because many of the plovers spend at least some of their seasonal routines walking along the same sandy ocean beaches that we are drawn to.
What is interesting, however, is that many of these birds also diverge from what we consider “normal” and head inland for the breeding season. Among all of the plovers, the real standout exception to the “shorebird” model is the killdeer. Ranging throughout southern Canada, the Lower 48 and Mexico during the breeding season, the killdeer has virtually abandoned the need to be near saltwater habitats, but it is still drawn to wide-open spaces that resemble coastal situations.
A couple of miles from my house, there is a hayfield that is surrounded by paved roads. On the west side of the field, there is an old road that has been virtually abandoned after a replacement route was put in about 300 yards to the east. The field is an almost perfect square and a horseshoe-shaped turnabout that was lined with gravel intrudes into the field from the abandoned road on the west. These conditions are perfect for killdeer.
Wide-open spaces, devoid of trees with gravelly soil substrate and a few shallow pools on rainy days are ideal nesting conditions for these birds and such valuable territories are hotly contested in the early spring. It seems that killdeer are so intent on seizing quality nesting sights that they will often arrive extremely early to stake their claims. Such was the case this year.
Way back on March 8, I was out exploring on a nice Sunday morning. You may remember the green-winged teal that I found that same day and on the way home I took a slow drive past this wonderful hayfield in the hopes of spotting a common snipe. No snipe was seen, but I did come upon a group of killdeer that seemed tolerant of my car. I was on the abandoned road, so I could turn in any direction I wanted and move (or not) at my leisure. This made photography a dream.
The birds were involved in what had to be a territorial dispute, but I had never witnessed anything like it before. There were five killdeer altogether and though they traveled in a group it was fairly clear that they did not necessarily like one another. There was a lot of posturing and mirroring going on and occasionally a quick, aggressive lunge was executed by one bird or another. The birds were so focused on their conflict that they didn’t seem to care about me.
Eventually, one of those aggressive lunges seemed to do the trick and three of the killdeer retreated, leaving one pair of birds as the apparent victor. The noise that was being made during and after this entire conflict was a cacophony of beeps and longer calls that explained the species’ Latin name, “vociferus.” Yikes, what a racket.
This week, I thought it might be nice to present you with a couple of photos and a challenge. If you have some free time on your hands, or if you know of some children who need something quiet to do, why not try to draw a killdeer? One of today’s photos is a single bird in full voice, while the other photo shows four of the killdeer in the middle of their territorial conflict. Will you try a pencil drawing, pen-and-ink, or watercolors? Even crayons or colored pencils are fine.
You can send digital copies of your artwork directly to my email, speakingofnature@gmail.com, and I’ll create a special gallery page on my website for entries. Please note the first name and age of the artist with each submission so I can organize the gallery. The grand prize winner will receive a signed copy of my book, “Still Speaking of Nature.” The submission deadline is April 15.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 22 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology and physics. Visit speakingofnature.com for more information, or go to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.