There’s a big empty lot a few blocks from my house in Wilmette, Illinois, and all summer long, Seamus (our dog) and I have been watching a couple of kildeer hatch their eggs.  

You’ve probably seen kildeer, even if you don’t recognize the name — they’re the diligent-looking, stilt-legged little birds that are usually found on the shoreline, playing matador with the incoming tide, darting in daringly to peck at some kind of minute crustaceans dumped on shore by the waves, then racing away frantically as the the next big wave bears down on them. 

What these kildeer were doing in Wilmette, a mile away from Lake Michigan, I didn’t at first understand, not, at least, until I learned on Wikipedia that they often nest far from water.  Thinking them lost or out of their natural range, I spent the summer rooting them on, because the empty lot wasn’t completely empty — there’s a big sign advertising a new condo development at the front, and a single backhoe parked ominously at the back, very close to where the unprotected kildeer’s nest lay on the flat ground.

The kildeer, however, seemed less concerned about this real estate development than about Seamus, who unleashed an obligatory yelp in their direction every time we walked past.  When Seamus came too close a couple of times, I actually got to see one of the adults enact the pantomime that’s the species’ greatest claim to fame:  She (he?) raced away from the unprotected nest, peeping piteously and holding one wing stiffly, as if broken.  The idea, apparently, is to pretend that they’re injured and easy prey, thereby luring a predator in their direction, and away from their vulnerable brood.

This marvelous altruistic display wouldn’t work all that well against a backhoe.  But in one of the few positive local outcomes of the current frightening financial crisis, construction on the condo complex appears to have been delayed.  And so, a few weeks back, the young kildeer hatched and flew away.

Wilmette, their new home, is as good a place as any to raise a fledgling family.  It’s the kind of town where people drive four miles below the speed limit; keep their cars a foot behind the crosswalk when turning left instead of pulling into the middle of the intersection, as drivers everywhere else in the world are wont to do; and keep a discreet distance between themselves and the person at the counter not only at banks, so as not to see the details of your sensitive financial transactions, but at Italian take-out places, so that they won’t offend you by inadvertently learning of your stunning preference in pizza toppings.  (This, I have to say, is even more profoundly irritating than the inability to turn left properly; last winter I was forced to wait out in the cold because the person in front of me at a little pizza place was maintaining a discreet six-foot distance between herself and the customer at the counter.)

In any event, I fervently hope that our current financial crisis ends as soon as possible, and that construction on all sorts of projects picks up immediately thereafter; but this isn’t entirely an unconflicted hope.  Even in Politenessville (the largely affectionate term I’ve begun to apply to Wilmette) there is no one, I don’t think, willing to relocate next season’s brood of kildeer before the next big wave of development arrives, and the backhoes begin their work.  And where else, in any event, could they possibly go? 

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