When housebound, taking care of a little baby, one can still enjoy a fair amount of bird-watching!

This morning, a family of

KILDEER

delighted me. Here’s the mother:

Try as I could, I could never get her and her three children in one frame. Here's one of the babies: I'd seen this family earlier in the conservancy lane that runs parallel to our road; but today, they were foraging for food in the grassy, empty lot opposite. I managed to get this shot of the mother and two of the chicks: Here's one of the chicks, running to Mommy after exploring a bit... You can see the mother looking out for the little one to the right: Here's another of the chicks: He was too adventurous, and seemed to be getting further and further away down the road from the others; his mother kept calling to him! Here are the two obedient ones, a study in horizontal lines:

It was great fun watching them.

Kildeer

are named that, apparently, after their call; but the calls I heard the mother and the babies making today didn’t sound anything like it!

While this was going on, some

NORTHERN MOCKINGBIRDS

flew around, and one settled on the Japanese Maple and started trying her various calls. Two

COMMON GRACKLES

flew in, green-blue feathers shining, and pecked at the worms in the grass. Two

AMERICAN ROBINS

had a massive, roll-over-each-other fight in our driveway, over some nesting material; they had separated before I could get my camera. And four

HOUSEFINCHES

came in to try and see if they could nest in the Arbor vitae bushes next to the front porch, and the

NORTHERN CARDINAL

couple also came visiting. So..quite a variety of visitors, I decided I’d photograph only the Kildeer…but photographing these fast-scuttling birds across the road wasn’t easy!