Recently, I was startled on my morning walk by a little bird chirping at me as loudly as she could.  She wasn’t a kind of bird that I had noticed before, but she was very fierce.  Her wings were out to her side and her feathers were puffed up to make herself look large.  As I passed her she settled down, which is when I noticed her nest.  She had made a nest on the ground in the landscaped bed.  There were four little eggs in the nest.

When I got home, I described the bird to Tom and he found out it was a killdeer.  The killdeer is a kind of plover and is named for its call, which sounds like “kill-deer, kill-deer.”  It is a shorebird that builds its nest on the ground, usually in areas close to human habitat.  The killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) is brown above with a white breast and has two distinct black bands, one encircling the neck and the other on the upper chest. In flight, you can see a long white wing-stripe.

The killdeer is best known for feigning injury to lure predators away from the nest. It appears helpless as it slowly hobbles away from the nest or young, hollering loudly as it goes. When the enemy is lured far enough away, the bird miraculously recovers and flies off.

When I walked by the little mama killdeer, she did not try to feign injury.  I stayed on the walking path and she was okay with that.  She was chirping loudly to warn me away from her nest.  I was, however, concerned about her.  The path is very busy with walkers, dogs, mowers, and landscape companies.

I looked for the mama killdeer every time I walked.  After a few days she stopped chirping at everyone walking by and just sat on her nest.  But she watched carefully.  It takes about four weeks for killdeer eggs to hatch and I started counting the days.  I included her in my prayers.

Just after two weeks, the mama killdeer and the nest disappeared.  I had seen several crows harrassing the geese and duck nests near the ponds in the area.  Maybe a crow got the eggs.  Maybe a dog or cat from the neighborhood disturbed the nest.  I will never know what happened to her or her eggs.  But her fierce chirping in defense of her nest brought me joy.

The experience of looking for the nest every day gave me a new perspective on Matthew 6:25-27:

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

As much as I cared about that little killdeer, God cares for each one of us.  In fact, these verses say that God thinks we are more valuable than a bird.  Jesus was reminding each of us that we are loved and God knows our needs.

May you be reminded today that God loves you.  God cares for you as much as a killdeer cares for her nest.  And may your nest be safer than that of a killdeer.