Close call

We have a lot of birds that call our property home.  We have seen egrets, hawks, wood storks, woodpeckers, meadowlarks, bobwhites, doves and many more varieties hanging out at our place.  We also have kilderes and nighthawks.  These birds are interesting because they nest on the ground.  For the past few years we have stumbled across their eggs in our backyard. 

Well there were three kildere eggs in the back yard the last month or so that hatched.  We saw two little kilderes scurrying around but not a a third.  Well over the past weekend Sadie was barking at the garden.  I came over and took a look.  There huddled under the leaf of a squash plant was the third baby kildere, just hanging out.  I called Sadie away and told her to leave the little bird alone.  By the time I came back out to take a picture of it the bird had moved to somewhere else.

The parent birds don’t like having the dogs anywhere in the vicinity of their babies.  Whenever one of the dogs is in the area the parent birds will land close by and act injured so the dogs come over to them.  They keep up the act to lead the dogs away, it’s pretty amazing.

Fast forward to last night.  I let the dogs out to do their business.  At night often I will let them out and come inside until they are done running around the yard.  Well I was on my computer when I heard Ali screaming at Sadie outside.  It sounded bad as I heard Ali “Oh my God, oh my God!”  I ran out from the office to see what was going on.  I got outside just in time to see the baby kildere scurry away.  Ali was in the middle of giving Sadie holy hell.  Evidently Sadie had the baby bird in her mouth, luckily Sadie apparently didn’t try to use it as a chew toy.  The bird seemed to be ok from the brief view I had of it.

We both continued scolding Sadie as she slinked inside.  I’m sure from the dog’s standpoint she didn’t know what she did wrong.  When something runs she always chases it and we don’t care.  She just happened to be able to catch the bird this time.  Well Ali and I  were relieved that Sadie didn’t kill the bird.  Now any night time dog bathroom breaks are going to require close supervision until the baby birds have made it to flying age.