Our Pet Sandpiper

Recently, Robby mentioned that whenever he drove down one side of the driveway, a bird would run right in front of his car. He though this was very strange, and figured we had a new pet living in the weeds somewhere.
When I mentioned this to Bob, he said that it was a sandpiper, and that undoubtedly, there was a nest somewhere nearby.

And Bob was right - the eggs were not actually in the weeds, but right on the gravel driveway with bits of weeds under them to form the "nest". The eggs looked so similar to the gravel that it took standing inside the house and watching the bird to see where she went to finally find them. Every time we went to look at the eggs, the bird would hop off the nest, screetching, run in the other direction, then flop down onto the ground with one wing flapping. We decided it was trying to appear hurt, to distract us from the eggs. Pretty strange defense mechanism!


Yesterday, we finally had 4 chicks. They, too, blended in very well with the gravel. We made sure not to tell the kids about them because we wanted to make sure they could stay safe!


And this morning, we found.............














Wonder what the lesson to be learned is........