A tennis-loving Killdeer couple sets up house...

Rick and Matty have been playing tennis at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, OH for the past couple of weekends and in the evenings during the week. The first weekend in June, all three of us were volunteers at the Serving it Up for Special Olympics fundraiser, which was also held there. While all this activity was going on, a Killdeer couple decided the best place to nest was right in the middle of the action...

If you look on the ground to the left of this sweet Killdeer, you'll see four speckled eggs. I had my long lens with me, so I was pretty far away, but people were walking all around this bird, not realizing four beautiful eggs were just off the sidewalk in the mulch. The Killdeer blended in so well, people didn't see the bird unless he or she started moving.

Killdeer often nest in suburban settings, but I've never seen one nest right in the center of a major tennis complex! The managers of the facility are very careful and protective of their nesting birds, and the gardeners know to stay away from the nest, so the eggs can hatch.

...a closer look at the well-camouflaged eggs. If you didn't know they were there, you would never see them. A Killdeer nest is just a scrape in the ground, or in this case, in the mulch alongside the sidewalk.

A Killdeer is a plover, and even though in Ohio suburbs they usually nest in open fields near a little gravel, they do like to be around water too...but I've never seen one hang out around a water sprinkler like this bird!

A nesting Killdeer wouldn't be a parent without a little broken-wing distraction display. While one bird sat on the nest, the other did a little flapping around looking like it was injured or had a broken wing. The ploy was a distraction to try to lure pedestrians away from the nest. 

...and it worked. The tennis players watched the "injured" bird  and stayed away from the nest. Eventually the bird flew off after another miraculous recovery, knowing the eggs were safe.