Baby Birds

We had a bird (a killdeer) lay her eggs in our unplanted garden. One of my mom's co-workers who used to be a conservationist looked up the type of bird for us and we found that they are ground nesters. There were 4 eggs. She stayed by them all day and chirped at us every time we went close. We waited and waited for them to hatch. I tried to check daily to see if they had hatched. I hadn't checked for awhile but was sitting at the kitchen table when I looked out and saw a baby bird running across our patio. It was SO cute! We went out and there were 2 baby ones running around and the mom and dad were out there, too. The mom and dad were chirping away and trying to corral the babies back to the garden. It was just like humans...the mom and dad were yelling and telling the babies to get back in the garden but they weren't listening. We went to the nest area and there was another baby, but it didn't look too good. It was much more scrawny than the other 2 that were running around. There was still one egg unhatched. We went back later and all 3 babies were huddled up together and the 4th egg was gone. I guess that one didn't make it. The next morning when I went out they were all gone :(. Our garden is in direct sun the majority of the day and it was so hot! I'm hoping they are all okay and the mom just moved them to the shade. I was really sad, though, because I wanted to watch them grow and learn to fly. They were so cute!! Here are some pictures of them:

Here are the 3 of them huddled together.

One of them running around.

The little one that didn't run around...I hope he made it!

This little guy hovered in the grass when we came out. Once we left, he was up and running around.