Worthy of an Oscar

"And the Oscar goes to . . ." the Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus). If you have any experience with these little birds, you know what great actors they can be when they feel you are getting too close to their nest, which is little more than a rocky depression in the field. The parents will act injured by flopping and limping around trying to draw your attention away from their eggs. I always thought it was a neat bird growing up here in Arkansas, since it looked like it belonged on some beach and not in some cow pasture. I did get to see its close cousin, the Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus), up in Maine where their nesting sites on the beaches are protected because of their threatened status in that area. These cousins look similar except the Piping Plover has one chest band and the Killdeer has two. The Killdeer gets its name from the sound it makes and they are practically year round residents of all of the continental U.S. Part of their success comes from the fact that they don't mind people. In fact, I took these pictures in the sub-division where my daughter and her family lives. The birds were all over the place running amongst and dodging the neighborhood kids.