In the Heat of the Day
Jun. 21st, 2008 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeAfter a much-larger-than-usual late breakfast, I thought it important to get out and walk for a while. Having spent the relatively cool part of the morning on the computer, I had no choice but to get out in the heat. I put my boots on and walked over to Quarry Lakes park to check on the status of the killdeer nest I found last week.
You may have noticed that I used "it" as the pronoun to identify the birds in question when I wrote about them earlier. That's because I can't see any obvious differentiation between the male and female birds, and there are two of them around the nest at times. Today was one of those times, and they double-teamed me, both of them going off in different directions and doing the broken-wing act. One of them in particular was proving to be no fool. It was getting pretty warm out there in the parking lot, with the only shade being the small bit provided by the scrubby little trees planted in each traffic island. This bird would run ahead of me to that bit of shade and start displaying. When I followed, it would get up and run on to the next island of shade and begin again.
The four eggs are still safe and sound in their precarious-looking ground nest. Killdeer take about 4 weeks to incubate their eggs because the birds are ready to go (but not to fly) shortly after hatching, rather than having to be fed by their parents for a while.
After letting myself be led away from the nest again, I made my way back through the increasingly blast-furnace like heat in the middle of the park (no trees on the trails here, and besides, the sun was so close to directly overhead that there wouldn't have been shade anyway). Good think I brought a bottle of water, too.
Incidentally, my blood sugar an hour after eating was a nice healthy 90. Oddly enough, an hour after that, having had nothing more than water, it had drifted back up to 125. Go figure.
You may have noticed that I used "it" as the pronoun to identify the birds in question when I wrote about them earlier. That's because I can't see any obvious differentiation between the male and female birds, and there are two of them around the nest at times. Today was one of those times, and they double-teamed me, both of them going off in different directions and doing the broken-wing act. One of them in particular was proving to be no fool. It was getting pretty warm out there in the parking lot, with the only shade being the small bit provided by the scrubby little trees planted in each traffic island. This bird would run ahead of me to that bit of shade and start displaying. When I followed, it would get up and run on to the next island of shade and begin again.
The four eggs are still safe and sound in their precarious-looking ground nest. Killdeer take about 4 weeks to incubate their eggs because the birds are ready to go (but not to fly) shortly after hatching, rather than having to be fed by their parents for a while.
After letting myself be led away from the nest again, I made my way back through the increasingly blast-furnace like heat in the middle of the park (no trees on the trails here, and besides, the sun was so close to directly overhead that there wouldn't have been shade anyway). Good think I brought a bottle of water, too.
Incidentally, my blood sugar an hour after eating was a nice healthy 90. Oddly enough, an hour after that, having had nothing more than water, it had drifted back up to 125. Go figure.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 09:53 pm (UTC)I used to see those birds on the green that AMD used to own. They sold it and now a housing development is being built. I felt really bad about that because it was home to quite a lot of wildlife. (At one point, we have to move a scheduled party because an endangered species -- burrowing owls, I think -- had moved into the gopher holes.) I routinely saw gophers and hawks and swallows. Ten years ago, there were bunnies there as well. Now? Nothing.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-21 10:46 pm (UTC)I'm really pleased that there's so much wildlife in Quarry Lakes. Considering that the place is a reclaimed gravel quarry, it's come back quite nicely. There were pelicans in one of the lakes today, and of course this time (me without my camera) they stayed put instead of flying off when I came near.