Killdeer or Kill Dear?

Kill Dear? Not on my watch.

The killdeer is named for the way its call sounds like the bird is crying, “killdeer, killdeer.”

But, maybe the namers of birds got it wrong, and the name should be “kill, dear?”

As an exposed ground-nester, the killdeer will pretend to have a broken wing to lure approaching predators away from nests and young. Their plaintive calls accompany this distraction display. Given this context, the call sounds more like, “Kill, dear? Kill, dear?”

Please pay heed to local dog-leash rules designed to protect breeding birds. Suitable nesting habitat is already in short supply due to human development (and its many offending offshoots such as climate change and invasive species encroachment). There are plenty of places set aside for dogs to run and chase and get their wiggles out. I’m a huge fan of dogs running and chasing and getting their wiggles out, and I’m also a huge fan of giving birds some small speck of habitat where they have a chance to raise their young undisturbed by human (and human’s bff’s) disruptions.

Even if your dog only wants to play and wouldn’t intentionally hurt a flea, its unbounded presence around ground-nesting birds can have devastating consequences.

Getting chased around by a dog wastes a lot of valuable energy. Are you a parent? After a long day of caring for your child, would you have the energy to deal with an exuberant dog chasing you or your child in circles around a field? Would running around pretending to have a broken arm feel like a good use of your time and energy? What if you knew if a dog found your baby your baby would get chomped?

I don’t have kids of my own, but I hear parenting is an active verb. Parents have limited energy reserves that require more worthy applications than dog avoidance. Every calorie a bird expends on your dog is a calorie that could have gone towards producing more healthy babies that grow into healthy adults that have more healthy babies. Beyond the energy expenditure a bird undergoes every time it’s flushed from the nest, the commotion caused by a dog near a nest alerts more adept predators to the nest location.

Thanks for hearing my PSA for protecting nesting birds from our favorite, most enthusiastic fur friends. And next time you hear the call of a killdeer, know that you’ve stumbled upon a very cool bird. Killdeer that nest in Wisconsin overwinter as far south as Central, America. They return north when there’s enough exposed, thawed ground to provide access to a steady food supply (of mostly invertabrates). Fun fact, killdeer do most of their foraging at night when their meals of worms and other subterranean critters move closer to the soil’s surface. Yum, yum, yum. You can find killdeer by day or night frequenting agricultural fields, prairies, shorelines, and large open lawns like those found on golf courses or at sports complexes.