Look very closely at this image until you see them…
Mother Nature has endowed its creatures with a wondrous array of adaptations to fill every niche. Some species are outliers, possessing survival techniques well outside the norm.
Count the killdeer, an attractive upland shorebird with a piercing call that sounds like “kill-deer,” among those outliers. Within hours of hatching, their young are ready to run and begin feeding themselves by mimicking their parents’ foraging techniques.
Their nests are virtually non-existent because, well, they don’t really need them. The adult female lays her well-camouflaged eggs directly on the ground in a spot that’s often little more than an exposed scrape in gravel or short vegetation.
Your best indicator a nest is nearby is the arrival of one of the adults performing a famously overly dramatic broken-wing display intended to lure would-be predators away from the nest.
So, did you see them yet? Four eggs in a “nest.”
