Oh dear. It seemed to me that the crow was chasing the Killdeer. Could it
be that one crow was doing the chasing while the other(s) were eating the
eggs?

Margaret Parkinson
University District, Seattle

-----Original Message-----
From: tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu
[mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of
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Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 12:25 PM
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Subject: [Tweeters] Killdeer and Crows.



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


------------------------------

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

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