The Strange, Sleepless, Tweaked-Out World of the Killdeer

By Mel Carriere

Image from:   http://www.urbanwildlifeguide.net/2011/08/killdeer.html

The killdeer is the "tweaker" of the bird world.  They never sleep, you can hear their incessant, fidgety, bone rattling, screeching complaints at all hours of the day or night, and they seem to be everywhere at once.  I have seen a killdeer under a street lamp on my block, I have frequently come across them in shopping center parking lots, they frequent public and corporate business parks, they are quite at home on school campuses, and I have also found them in natural settings on the muddy fringes of San Diego Bay and in salt marshes.  There doesn't seem to be any place relatively flat that is not on the killdeer real estate wish list.

All this, and a lot of folks don't even know that they exist.  This became clear last night as my wife and  I accompanied my son to the bank and could hear the harsh alarm bells of disturbed killdeer going off all around us.

"What is that?" my wife asked me.

"Those are killdeer," I said.

"Why killdeer?  Can they really kill deer?" she continued, asking the number one answer on Family Feud in response to the question "What do people say after you tell them the bird they hear is a killdeer?"

"Of course they can't," I said.  "They call them that because the noise they make is supposed to sound like Killdeer, Killdeer, Killdeer."  It doesn't sound anything like that, really, so maybe the real origin of the name is because this little bird has delusions of grandeur, or perhaps it has managed to run grazing multi-point bucks away from its ground nest in the past using its broken wing display, fostering the myth that it lured the deer off Pied Piper like to their doom.

The bird's ambulatory style also lends credence to the tweaker hypothesis.  Killdeer tweak their way across parking lots, meadows, and lawns, stopping and starting at intervals as if the highly taut spring within them needs to be rewound before resuming.  Then at the slightest facial twitch or groin scratch of a passerby they will launch into flight and loudly proclaim their outrage with the loud, klaxson call that theoretically gives the bird its name.

Because I've done overnight security jobs where the Killdeer in the area never seem to put on their stocking caps and go to bed, but instead spend the entire interval between dawn and dusk fleeing from their own shadows beneath street lights, I was deeply interested in the sleep patterns of these birds.  So I did a lot of researching around on the Internet and surprisingly enough, the insomnia associated with the Killdeer species turns out to be a real problem, not so much for the birds as the human inhabitants of wherever they live, who are often rudely awakened at 3 AM by what they think is the nerve fraying wail of a neighbor's car alarm, but is actually only a family of killdeer fleeing from the terror of a passing moth or a bouncing bunny rabbit.  Internet chat rooms are full of complaints on this score.  One Killdeer complainer says:

"Killdeer, the little plover looking birds... what the heck are they doing making so much noise at night? Sheesh, the last 3 nights they've been flying around chattering their heads off at like 3:30 am. Anyone else have noisy killdeer? GO TO SLEEP! ROOST! Aargh!"

This comment generated a lot of responses, so it is apparent that the sleeplessness of Killdeer is definitely not something confined to my neighborhood.

The next time you see these little winged tweakers stutter stepping across your driveway, offer a glass of warm milk, or better yet a nightcap.  This bird with its apparently taped open eyelids seems like it should be collapsing from exhaustion at any minute, but instead there it is, orbiting around you or trying to lure you off the edge of a cliff with that bogus broken wing act.  You're not much bigger than a young buck, young man, so mind your manners around these tweaker Killdeer.  Remember, they never sleep.


Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious quantities of warbler friendly coffee, which is not cheep, as the warblers say when they are not warbling.  Although I am not responsible for my ad content, I invite you to investigate what these sponsors have to say, unless you find them completely morally repugnant


Mel's latest on hub pages about corruption, deception and disillusionment in the "Gilded" State.

Nighthawks, Anyone? Thoughts on a Tennis Court Feeding Frenzy

By Mel Carriere

Image attributed to:  http://utahbirders.blogspot.com/2014/05/utah-big-day-record-pt-1-scout-route.html

If they play tennis at night, which I'm not really sure they do because I'm not much of a fan of the sport, I wonder if Serena Williams or her sister ever looked up and noticed the remarkable nighthawks engaged in amazing, fluttering flight among the flood lights above.  Even though I do not play tennis at night, I have been to places where they do, and have stood in awe of this spectacle - not at the amateurish, clumsy swings of the tennis players, but of the smooth, precise, coordinated flight of the Lesser Nighthawks catching bugs in the lights.

As it turns out, tennis courts are a mini ecosystem.  In addition to the primates sweating and grunting down below as they make crude, awkward attempts to imitate the graceful and beautiful Serena, there are hundreds of moths, beetles and other bugs attracted to the brilliant bulbs that illuminate the courts, and following these bugs are the predators that feast upon them, including perhaps a few bats that pass by incognito because their dark coats blend into the night above, and also the Lesser Nighthawks whose wingtip safety reflectors and bright strip of reflective tape across the chin clearly announce their identity for the spectators at the courts.

I accompanied my son to the park a few nights ago so he could do his jogging.  As he slogged around the park's pathways, I sat outside the gym and watched the parade of Nighthawks that were circling around the tennis court lights across the way.  There must have been at least a dozen of the birds, but it was impossible to count because not all of them were illuminated at the same moment.  The Chordeiles acutipennis would dash and flutter in, scoop up hordes of bugs in their enormous bug shoveling gapes, then vanish into the darkness beyond the range of the glare of the floodlights.

One thing about Lesser Nighthawks is that, even though they straggle into work in rather lackadaisical fashion, once they are on the clock they are all business.  I have seen them commuting slowly in from the higher sage scrub around dusk, appearing to be fighting off the effects of a bender the day before, dipping and swirling in a rather aimless, pointless fashion, as if they were trying to delay the inevitable, like we all do when we have had a rough night but we still have to make a living.  Once within the limelight of their tennis court theater, however, the flight of the sluggards instantly transforms from haphazard into precise as they pirouette about the flood lights with swiftly executed, geometrical turns.  Although they can glide a straight line as efficiently as any raptor I've seen, Lesser Nighthawks alternate their smooth, flapless flight with a rapid fluttering motion which made me think of bats as I sat there and observed.

This line of thinking took me to the concept of convergent evolution, which basically means "...the independent evolution of similar features in species of difference lineages (per Wikipedia)."  For instance, bats and Nighthawks are nothing alike, one being a mammal and the other a bird, but they have evolved a superficially similar pattern of fluttering flight, and I couldn't help but wonder if chasing insects on the wing requires these quick wing beats.  It seems that swifts and swallows also pursue bugs through the air using this same rapid fire flapping motion, followed by quick glides.

While on the subject of convergent evolution, there are other examples in the bird world that demonstrate how species of different evolutionary lineages nonetheless evolve the same physical traits.  For instance, have you ever noticed that birds who inhabit flat areas, such as meadows, parks, beaches and construction sites develop white edging on their tail feathers?  Meadowlarks have this, as do Pipits and Horned Larks, all birds that forage in wide open areas.  I wonder if this white edging along the tail feathers breaks up their silhouette and helps them disappear into the landscape, so that they are not so easily spotted by predators flying overhead.

Life is full of wonders like this to observe and ponder, if we take the time to observe and ponder.  So the next time you are playing tennis at night, look up!  Don't worry - your name is not Serena and this is not Wimbledon, so if the ball misses your racket and hits you in the belly while you are marveling at the fluttering Nighthawks, no one is going to care.


Get this cool Lesser Nighthawk puzzle on Amazon! 


 Birds by Mel is powered for flight by copious amounts of shade grown, warbler friendly coffee, which unfortunately is very expensive.   I have nothing to do with ad selection here, but unless you find them completely annoying or offensive I would appreciate if you investigated what my sponsors have to say.