Desert Egg Hunt

A feathered sentinel patrolled the gravel road leading to my camp in the high desert lands of southern Idaho. Nearly every time I drove on the road past its post, the killdeer crossed to the other side, making its round.

The killdeer is guarding something, but not the road. It's protecting its cache of eggs through diversion.

Killdeer are not nest builders. They instead lay their eggs amidst rocks. Gravel makes a perfect terrain in their opinion. It provides camouflage for their speckled eggs. Never mind the fact that gravel on the side of roads potentially means frequent traffic traveling at high speeds. Fortunately, the road that my killdeer's eggs where next to was so rough that vehicles couldn't go much faster than 10 mph.

The traffic speed and frequency really must make a difference in the level of stress that a killdeer experiences since they are compelled to cross the road whenever any moving object comes within a certain distance of their eggs.

Finding killdeer eggs is not easy. Even though I could see the general area from which the killdeer crossed every time I passed, evolution has performed its job well - the eggs look so much like rocks that it's easy to gloss over them.

At least the killdeer is willing to play the hot/cold game with me. All I had to do is watch for it to put on its dramatic show to let me know I was getting warmer. The closer you get to its cache, the killdeer will feign a broken wing to draw a potential predator away from the eggs.

Can you spot the eggs? Click on the photo to enlarge it.

After a couple of attempts, I finally located the eggs.