Oh where, oh where, have the killdeer gone?
Oh where, oh where can they be?
Four little eggs
Grown into eight skeeter legs.
Oh where, oh where can they be?
Block C, row 5, 20 feet in: after my husband's discovery of the killdeer nest, he and I decided we would stay away from rows 4 through 6 so the killdeer family would remain undisturbed. This meant no weeding, no tilling, no activity of any kind in that section of the field! We were holding a lavender festival in a couple weeks and questioned whether we should explain to visitors about the home in the lavender or remain silent: we decided to let our visitors know that they were welcome to walk among the lavender EXCEPT in Block C. Gene and I weeded the lavender away from that area and when mother and father killdeer would come with their warnings or started their lamentations, we knew even that was too close and we left. We knew that the weeds, no matter how big the plant and deep the root, would wait for us...
Gene came in one afternoon: three of the eggs were gone; the fourth was still intact. Even the shells of the three little brown mottled eggs were gone; only the fourth egg was as it had been from the first time we saw it. Gene and I mulled over what could have happened; he went over to our daughter's place (next door) and talked over what possibly could have happened to those three precious eggs and why one was still remaining. Ravens were at the top of our list of suspects; hawks, varmints... those evil carnivores would eat anything... they had no shame killing defenseless baby birds and gobbling them up like the vultures they are... then...
Early the next morning, my husband started cultivating our daughter's field. Out among her lavender field and much to the surprise of my husband, the mother and father killdeer started with their dance, running towards then away from the tractor. Rather than being on our place, they now were in the fence line between our daughter and us. They sang their song of pain and spread their wings as if broken. My husband looked to the right of the tractor and there, with little skeeter legs, were three miniature replicas of their parents running away. Into the house my husband came, all out of breath! Three babies! He saw three babies! He got the four-wheeler out of the garage, I bailed on, and we drove to our daughter's lavender. No babies! No mother! No father! No killdeer anywhere! We wondered about the fourth egg, whether it was still in the nest unhatched. Out to our field on the four-wheeler we went and, lo and behold, the fourth one had hatched. Rejoice! Rejoice! We were so excited! We came to the house, got something cold to drink and went out into the backyard to rejoice some more! A couple days later, we saw the parents and three babies in our lavender field and the fourth little one--isn't there always a "Wrong Way Corrigan" in every family--in our daughter's field, running as fast as those little legs could carry them--three babies going south and one heading north. We rejoiced that the family was whole. Then, we apologized to the ravens, the hawks... I personally refuse to apologize to the varmints...
I am perplexed about the shells, though. They disappeared, not a trace of an egg shell to be found. Someone suggested that, perhaps, the mother ate the shells for mineral content and someone else suggested that they could have disposed of the shells so a predator would not find the nest. I did think I saw one of the killdeer deposit something resembling a piece of a shell in the pond. However, I do not know if either of these suggestions have any merit nor if what I saw in its beak was a shell; perhaps it was something it "fished" out of the pond. I will say that both suggestions sound reasonable to me.
When you visit my lavender field, I will persist you stay away from portions of Block C. I know where a precious, young family of killdeer can be...
