Buster Makes A Find

This morning when we stepped out of the car on Mehl Creek Road to do some birding, we spotted a Killdeer who immediately went into a series of strange body postures as shown in this photo.

We recognize this behavior as an effort on the killdeer’s part to lure us away from its nesting site.  We ride this section of road a lot on our bicycles and have long given up on finding the nest.  Killdeer make their nest right in the gravel and the eggs and chicks blend in so well it is always almost impossible to find.  Today two adult killdeer where doing their best to lure us away along the north side of the road.  As we were about to leave I went to call Buster and I noticed that he was on the south side of the road and had found something.  A closer look revealed that he had found the nest with four baby killdeer.  Buster never touched the chicks; he really does not have a killer instinct, just extremely curious.