Mother's Instinct

During our visit to HomeTown, we got to observe a neat little encounter in God's creation.  My parents have this bird in their yard that they felt was baiting their black lab, Jet.  Whenever my Dad would go to play catch with Jet, this bird would make all kinds of noise and flap her wings and so forth.  At one point, my Mom observed this interaction and saw the bird flapping her wings and and told my Dad, "I think she has a broken wing."  However they started to notice when they left that area of the yard, the bird would calm down and and go about as if nothing had happened.

So my Dad Googled it.  What did we do before the internet?

Sure enough, he plugged in the bird's behavior and characteristics and found out that the bird was a Killdeer.  Apparently the Killdeer is native to the Midwest, but are not very common in the Northwest.  So interesting.  Turns out that these birds typically build their nests on gravel rooftops, which certainly aren't very common where my parents live, but they do have a gravel fire pit they use to build on occasional campfire.  And guess what is sitting in the gravel....

Four little eggs.  Which my Dad had to point out to me three times before I actually saw them; they are that well camouflaged. 

What this mama bird does when she feels her babies are being threatened or are in danger, is she runs away from the nest and making all the ruckus she can in effort to distract the so called predator.  They even fake broken wings, which my Mom fell for, hook, line and sinker.  (For the record, I would have too, had I not known the story before hand.)

It didn't even cross my mind to record this, so I could share a video, so the pictures will have to do.

Every Mama has a mothering instinct each other Mama can relate to.   Isn't that just the neatest thing?