She belongs to a very special class--the onomatopoetic. Others like her, so blessed, are bobwhites, chickadees, and cuckoos (there are more), all of whom are named for their rhetoric. The deer who now-and-then stroll through out backyard have nothing to fear from her, despite her name, which derives from a song that is anything but mellifluous, more of a shriek really, never a single shot. Whenever I step out the back door--early morning or late at night--it rips through a backyard that extends a country mile into the horizon.
And that shriek is not pleasant. From her point of view, I suppose, it gets the job done. You can't not hear it. You always know she's there. Hide it under a bushel?--no! I'm going to let it zing--and she does.
And she's there all the time lately because she's decided, with no common sense at all, to put her nest right here on the stones in the landscaping, on bare stones. There they sit, bare naked.
Her neighbor, Ma Robin, has the good sense to bring up her young'ins in an evergreen nest created so deftly no one can see it. But there Mrs. Killdeer sits--two eggs, like the stones that surround them, bare naked against life itself. They have no defense really except their camo.
(I'm assuming she's married, even though her husband must be somewhere on the road--at least he's rarely around; it would simply be too much to have them living in sin in my own backyard.)
She has a formidable eye. Seriously, if I step out on the deck upstairs, she lets go with her infernal shrieking, as if all night she's been waiting for me to harm the kids. First, she ambles off the nest in my direction, as if to make more clear her presence, then she flies--maybe twenty feet or so--all the while hacking at the morning with that squawking warning, as if the eggs themselves should take cover.
She grumbles too, low-throated, and ambles around as if she can't decide what's up. She doesn't pull that "isn't it sad about my broken wing?" act all that often, but it's as much a part of her act as that pestilent noise she puts up.
It's an act, a delightful ploy, assuming that if she takes over the stage I won't notice the kids--or soon-to-be kids.
Meanwhile the kids spend some significant down time in their confines--57 days, I guess, which may not be bad if you've got plush accommodations. I'm not sure when she laid them. We did notice that she and her mate did a lot of looking. I don't think they used a realtor (if they did, that fraud should lose her license), but they certainly did some meticulous and noisy research.
The first time I realized the eggs were there was a week ago, which means there's a calendar full of noisy dawns yet to come.
But when those chillin' of hers break loose upon the world--if they make it--they'll be on their own. No helicopter parent, this lady. Once they crack the eggs they leave the nest (not a cliche); they mingle or get mangled from day one. None of this cute little baby feeding Mrs. Robin indulges her kids with. By her measure, Robin moms are sophisticates, probably over-educated, and therefore sickeningly indulgent. Blue collar Mom Killdeer takes one look at her progeny and lets them know it's a jungle out there. If they're going to make it, she'll tell them, hit the road.
And they'll be off, just like that. No molly-coddling, no nighty-nights, no sweet sooksums, no tickled chins. G'won.
Trust me, by then they'll already have learned the song that gives them their name.
Highway 60 is little more than a stone's throw away, and, this time of morning it's full of commutes. But what happens back here in our backyard--the onomatopoetics, not to mention these backyard goldfinch, and the ground squirrel, the mourning dove, that bunny that probably should die--all of that's called retirement.
Ain't bad work if and when you can get it.
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