My children’s elementary school celebrated Earth Day with a school garden cleanup. When I arrived to volunteer, I found the first graders peeping with excitement like baby chicks. But before we got to work, the teacher quieted her brood and pointed to a square of dirt that had been marked off by four orange cones. Peering into the center of the area, I saw two small, brown eggs with black speckles resting on the ground. It was a killdeer’s nest.
Killdeer are named for the sound of their cries. Appropriately, the Latin name of these plovers is charadrius vociferus. The adults are vociferous or noisily adamant in their trademark calling to distract predators from their eggs.
These shorebirds are found inland, often around ponds in neighborhoods. They adapt well to human presence, although it was a questionable choice to lay eggs near so many pounding shoes.
But throughout the day, these kids reminded each other not to run through the area, even as they raced in every other direction. One small girl, in particular, hawked the nest and cautioned her most exuberant peers with a vociferous warning not unlike a killdeer itself.
Upon hatching, killdeer chicks are precocial, meaning they’re up and running, chasing down insects for their meals right from the start. But while they were still eggs, these two killdeers got an assist from a class of students, who are learning to make their way in the world on their own and in community.
I assisted a flock of girls, which included my daughter, in excavating a cumbersome clover patch nearby the killdeer’s nest. As they dug, they debated names for the birds-to-be, settling on Billy and Lily Killdeer.
I’m not sure that any of us, no matter how well-intentioned, can care for “the environment” without dutiful attention to a small part of it. Rather than an abstraction, affection is personal. It struck me that preserving those two tiny eggs was perhaps the most valuable lesson of the day.
I know the next time I hear that distinctive bird cry, I’ll wonder if it’s Billy or Lily.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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