You drive onto a stone-covered parking lot for a flea market and a noisy bird flies directly from in front of your car, calling loudly.

You probably disturbed a common plover called a killdeer. It gets its name from the "Killdee, Killdee, Killdee," call.The killdeer is a relative of sandpipers but is technically a plover. Other plovers include the semi-palmated plover and the black-bellied plover. The former makes regular visits to the shoreline at Beltzville Lake during migration times. The killdeer usually makes its home quite a distance from a body of water. In fact, surprisingly they prefer any flat, field area that has sparse vegetation.A typical nest site is often an old construction area where much topsoil may have been removed leaving little soil to support many plants.The killdeer pictured here was photographed near a retention basin created to catch runoff water.I saw a pair in this area over a few weeks span but never could locate any young. I'm sure they nested in a large rather bare area nearby.Killdeer reach about 9 inches in size with the male and female looking very similar. They can be quickly identified with their two dark breast bands and their habit of running a short burst, stopping briefly, and spurting again.They lay their eggs directly on the gravel after the male scrapes out a number of options for his "choosy" mate. She adds a few bits of dry grass and generally lays an egg a day until the 3- or 4-egg clutch is complete. These eggs are highly blotched and are wonderfully camouflaged to blend in with the surrounding gravel.Both parent birds share the incubating duties until the young hatch in 25 days. Within a few hours, the young are soon following the parents, like ducklings do.The killdeer's best tactic is its "Oscar Winning" broken wing act. If a fox, crow, another predator, or you approach too close to the nest or young, the killdeer leaves the nest area, calls very loudly, spreads it bright tail feather area, and drags a wing on the ground.It then continues this act as it gets farther and farther from the area with the predator pursuing and eyeing up this easy meal. Eventually the bird makes a "miraculous" recovery and flies away leaving the pursuer open mouthed and still hungry.The young killdeer are also superbly patterned to help them squat down remaining motionless and nearly impossible to find.I have observed ruffed grouse and mallard ducks using the broken wing routine also. I do believe the "best leading actor award" though, goes to the killdeer. If you do see this routine, respect the bird's effort, enjoy the show, but maybe you'll want to backtrack over your own steps so you don't inadvertently step on these well-hidden eggs. Hey, keep those nature eyes open.Test your nature knowledge: Which of these is a fish-eating duck? A. Wood Duck B. Common Merganser C. Mallard Duck D. Black DuckAnswer to last week's nature trivia: The beaver, once extirpated from our state is now found in almost all Pennsylvania counties.Barry Reed can be reached at

breed71@gmail.com.