Parental distraction
-
- May
- 7
All those times I pretended to have a broken wing so you wouldn’t get eaten . . . One can almost hear the mother killdeer to her teenage offspring. OK, so I’m taking an anthropomorphic leap here but you get the idea (and stay tuned for the video).
A killdeer is a shorebird, one many people have probably seen on ballfields, along parking lot edges, on golf courses and in other open areas. The birds nest on the ground. To lure predators away from their young, parents feign having a broken wing. They pretend to be injured by flopping about on the ground in the hopes of attracting the predator. Kind of a Hey-look-at-me, I’m-hurt-and-so-easy-to-catch thing. Check out the video after the jump.
The video shows a killdeer in the parking lot at the Green Chimneys school in Patterson. I saw him (or her) doing his act when I first got out of my car. After visiting the school for this story, I grabbed the video camera and went to look for him. Sure enough, three seconds after I started walking around that corner of the lot, the bird appeared and started doing his thing.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 2:47 pm by Mike Risinit.
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Journal News staff writer Greg Clary writes Earth Watch, reporting on environmental issues in the lower Hudson region. Clary has been a reporter, editor and columnist at the Journal News since 1988 and has covered police and courts, transportation, municipal government, development and the environment in the Lower Hudson Valley, among other topics. 
Laura Incalcaterra covers the environment, open space and zoning and planning issues for The Journal News. A Boston College graduate, Laura grew up in Rockland, attended East Ramapo schools and has worked for The Journal News since 1993. Laura has written features and covered North Rockland, crime, government and a host of other issues.
Mike Risinit covers Patterson and Kent in Putnam County, as well as environmental topics touching on the Hudson River and the Great Swamp. Risinit has been a reporter at The Journal News since 1998.
