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Charadrius vociferus
The larger plover relative of the endangered Piping Plover. Unlike the Piping Plover, which has one black ring around it's neck, the Killdeer has two. The tail feathers are orange plumage, and become noticeable in a distracting display when the nest is threatened, faking injury or a broken wing. Additionally they take flight and call loudly... "kill-deer!" This particular Killdeer is nesting in Empire, MI, right down the road from the Piping Plover on Sleeping Bear Dunes National Shoreline.
Nest in low-vegetation areas such as lawns, fields, and gravel-like ground.
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Kill... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUO9vVkc... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJTt5I8K...
Spotted on May 3, 2016
Submitted on May 4, 2016
2 Comments
Thank you! :) It was right at my work. We have a lot of feild so it's much more difficult to find the nests here, especially since the killdeers are amazing at misleading you lol, but I finally found one and sectioned it off.
Really nice spotting of scrape nest and mom's distraction behavior!