Hi,

I also noticed the killdeer/crow chases, and found the killdeer's nest - 4 eggs, right in the middle of the wood-chipped area. I checked on it for a couple of days (and completed a nest record for the Burke museum). The killdeer was undoubtedly trying to distract the crows from its nest, but that apparently didn't work - the nest was empty on Wednesday afternoon, likely depredated. When I found the nest, the killdeer put on a very convincing broken wing display, which probably worked on the crows for a couple days, but not long enough!



Fran Bonier
PhD candidate
Biology Department
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-1800


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Message: 23
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 23:41:57 -0800
From: "James West" <jameswest at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Killdeer and Crows.
To: "Margaret Parkinson" <margparkie at comcast.net>, "Tweeters"
<tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <00ef01c65496$ef439890$7601a8c0 at IBMThinkPadT43>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Interesting: this has been a regular 'show' at the Fill for a couple of weeks,
and it can go on for half an hour at a time, sometimes with just one crow doing
the intermittent chasing, but sometimes with a second or even third crow
'spelling' the first. Initially I assumed it was predatory behavior on the
crow's part, then noticed that some chases appeared to have been initiated by
the Killdeer: defense of nesting territory? This Killdeer is pretty faithful
to an area covered with cedar chips just north of the path from the Dime Lot to
the Urban Horticulture building, and can often be located there, sitting in a
shallow scrape in the chips -- no eggs detectable, and I've only seen one
Killdeer at a time, for what it's worth, but Killdeer have nested very close to
there in the past. However, in the recent rainy and windy weather, the Killdeer
and several members of the Fill's crow population could occasionally be seen
huddled close together in what shelter there was and !
taking no notice of each other. I've begun to wonder whether there's an element
of play here -- or distraction practice? Given the fauna of Montlake Fill,
including the couple of hundred crows that make the Fill their evening roost, I
can't believe a clutch of Killdeer eggs, however cryptic, would last half a day
before they became a nourishing snack for something. Interested to hear what
others might make of the chasing behavior....

I'm sure nobody is surprised that the turn of speed the flying Killdeer puts on
when a crow catches up with it takes it well out of harm's way in a fraction of
a second: more evidence that the Killdeer is leading the crow on?

James West
Seattle