And just like that *snap*, the killdeer’s eggs were gone.
The man we hired to install a sump-pump next to my husband’s shop had no idea that his heavy equipment trailer’s width would take out the four speckled eggs. I saw the tracks in the lane as they drifted to the right, to the side where the nest was. I had coordinated the nest’s location with a large white rock and in line with the fence post several feet away. The adult killdeer, who took turn nesting and who had become so accustomed to our vehicles passing by and therefore didn’t even bother to fly away each time we passed by, were nowhere to be seen.
Even upon close inspection I could see no eggshell fragments. Nothing but gravel and rocks. Maybe they had hatched that morning before the trailer drove over their nest. Maybe.
It’s as if they were never there.
Oh that’s a sad story. Fingers crossed it was the (perhaps unlikely) happy ending.
The killdeer at work disappeared too! Must be an epidemic. Or else, once the babies hatch, they take off for safer pastures…
Since you saw no evidence of egg shells, I’m going to believe they hatched and left before the trailer drove over where the nest was. It’s too sad to think of the other possibility!
Awww, that makes me kind of sad to think they might have just gotten crushed. Poor momma bird.
We can only hope – a killdeer has a short incubation just like chickens – my friend Google sez 26 – 28 d.
A couple of yrs ago when we went out to pick up a load of hay, Mr P had a section of driveway ROPED OFF so no one inadvertently drove over “his” killdeer nest (a not-insubstantial risk w/big rigs coming thru)…