The Call of a Killdeer

The call of a killdeer is less a song than a squeal. It reminds me of the sound of a straight pin being drawn across metal. Or a branch being blown across a window screen. Or a fingernail on a chalkboard. High-pitched and shrieky.

In the open field just outside my bedroom windows, I often see them making bounced landings, their voices mimicking the squeaking of brakes as they quickly become invisible, light brown feathers and black neck rings blending into the foliage.

I was startled, then, just the other day when, backing out of the carport, I heard a killdeer precipitously close. I stopped the car and got out to look for what I assumed was an injured bird and it took only a moment to locate him, a warm brown blot on the bright green grass. I approached slowly and, rather than flying away, he began limping toward the edge of the yard, one wing dangling at his side.

Every couple of steps he awkwardly attempted to lift the wing and each time I got a glimpse of the multiple shades of tan and rust and white that feathered his belly. I did not immediately realize that I was talking to him, cooing sympathetically as though my reassurances would assuage what had to be primal fear. I could almost hear his tiny heart pulsing hard and fast in time with his shrieks.

He struggled all the way across the yard, across the driveway, and into the field, forcing me to accept the fact that there was nothing I could do to help and taking some slight solace in seeing another killdeer close by, a friend – I convinced myself – who would, surely, not leave the injured bird alone.

I have not been able to get the bird out of my mind. I have scanned the yard and the nearby brush for feathers. I have listened intently for killdeer calls closer by than usual. I have reminded myself over and over that it is the way of the natural world for birds to be injured, for birds to die.

I decided that the least I could do was to write about the killdeer, to offer up a remembrance, a memorial. I could, with words if not avian medicine, give honor to my feathered neighbor. I began by researching the killdeer, including its Latin name (Charadrius vociferus), its species name (plover), and its habitat (which happens to be quite broad both geographically and seasonally).

After mentioning that killdeer often nest near “human development,” the text goes, quite nonchalantly if you ask me, to mention that “Adults perform broken-wing displays to distract predators from their nests and young.”

I think I read the sentence five times in succession before I started laughing. I had, obviously, been had.

It is not the first time I have been fooled, duped, or deceived (though it is more common for my gullibility to be revealed by humans than by birds), but it is the first time I have articulated the common thread among the fooling, duping, and deceiving. Having been tutored by the killdeer, I can now say with clarity and, I hope, generosity that birds – and people – lie when they are afraid, when something important is at risk, when everything within sight, within earshot feels like a threat. And considering the general state of things that is pretty much every day.

Somewhere in my yard, probably deep within the branches of the 40-year-old Ligustrum, there is a killdeer nest and over the next couple of weeks there will be baby killdeer, a gift that is worth the lie.

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