Just One Egg

When we arrived at Timbercrest nearly three weeks ago, we were shown a Killdeer nest in the middle of the gravel in the campsite across from ours, four black and white speckled eggs, and a very frantic parent trying to distract us from the nest with a characteristic broken wing act. Since then we’ve checked often to make sure one or the other of the parents was sitting on the nest. We witnessed a change of shift, one parent coming back to the nest to allow the other parent an opportunity to stretch his/her legs and grab a bite to eat. Even through the snow the other day the parents were keeping the eggs warm. Then yesterday we discovered the nest abandoned with one egg still in it. Does that mean that three of them hatched? Cool! But where were they? Then this morning as we were coming back from our morning walk we spotted two tiny killdeer scurrying across a grassy field and a frantic mama bird in distress trying to distract us from her offspring and far too far away for us to take a photo. Here’s hoping that even though we spotted only two babies, that all three have survived and will grow to maturity. It’s been a treat learning about Killdeer about which we’d known nothing previously.