Mama Bird Claims 50-Yard Line

The football team would have to keep its distance. Construction workers too. Because a rare mama killdeer had settled on the renovated Bowen Field, and wasn’t leaving until her chicks hatched.

The killdeer was spotted on the 50-yard line at the beginning of this month. Along with four eggs.

It was spring training season for Hillhouse’s football team.

Construction workers were putting finishing touches on a $11.6 million renovation of the field.

Officials informed them they could not come close to the fledgling avian family because their nests are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

The parks department summoned Ranger Dan Barvir to the scene. He’d seen the colorful killdeers’ nest before. They like open fields in coastal community. Another killdeer had set up a nest by the soccer fields off Ella Grasso Boulevard. In previous years they’ve occupied field space at Southern Connecticut State University and at Lighthouse Point Park.

And Barvir wasn’t surprised to see the bird settled exactly at the 50-yard line: “The reason she picked the 50-yard line: It has the best 360-degree view. So nothing could sneak up.  She put it on the little x mark that marks the exact middle of the field. It’s hilarious.”

Barvir told people that the incubation period would last up to 24 days, at which point the family would fly away.

“These babies are born very mature. They immediately get up and run around,” Barvir told the Independent. “They’re not born like other bird babies that are naked and can’t see.” They’re up and moving around within a half hour of hatching.

Fortunately, contractors had completed work on Bowen Field itself. They were in the bleachers.

Crew members from O&G Construction did get close to the killdeer at first, and were taken aback at the bird’s reaction. They asked Barvir if the bird posed a threat to them.

Not at all, Barvir responded. The killdeer was doing a typical “dance” to lure potential predators away from the nest.

“When anything gets close, she’ll pretend she has a broken wing. She’ll drag one wing across the wind as though she’s injured. That’s supposed to elicit a chase resopnse from the predator. They go after her. Away from the egg. When she’s a safe enough distrance, she flies away” back to the nest.

With the area around the 50-yard line cordoned off, the football team, which practices on the field in the spring, held a scheduled scrimmage within 40 yards.

This week, the killdeer family had flown. No sign of the nest remained.

Up in the bleachers, Camputaro & Sons Excavating cement mason Julio Rivera was sorry to see the field barren again.

“I miss it,” he said in between rubbing cement on the bleacher stairs. ​“I never seen one of those before. I think it was a pretty one.”

“We build these things for community support,” said the school system’s chief administrative office, Will Clark. ​“Community comes in many forms — and feathers.”