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One afternoon last April, I was walking along the sandspit high tide line with trash bag and camera when I heard what I can only describe as a most incessant little ruckus. I looked to my right and less than ten feet away, at the base of a small dune, was a Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) writhing in the sand.
Now, I have seen Killdeers feign injury before. They usually limp along, dragging a supposedly broken wing. But this bird was doing a great imitation of having a mortal injury. I must have come very close to stumbling upon it's nest and now it was doing everything possible to get my attention and shift my course away from its nest. I set down the trash bag and picked up the camera. Paying no attention to the camera, the bird continued its antics, tail fanned and flicking sand while its contorting its wings into impossible positions. The entire time it was peeking over its shoulder to make sure I was watching.
When it was sure it had my undivided attention, it popped up like a jack-in-the-box and began a sprint inland away from the nest. The bird would have probably led me across the dunes to the ocean had I followed but, not feeling like T. E. Lawrence at that particular moment and not wanting the parent to stray far from its nest, I retrieved the trash bag and headed back to the canoe. A few weeks later we would revisit the same area. There was no sign of the bird at the nest location. However, a few hundred yards to the south we came upon two Killdeer poking along the shoreline. One appeared to be a juvenile.
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