I had a dream one night last week,
That my face morphed and formed a beak!
Next thing I knew, I grew feathers too,
All silky with a bright blue hue.
As quick as a wink I was out the door,
My fear of heights forgotten evermore.
Soaring high into the warm spring air,
I wished all humans had lives this fair.
I found myself among my kind,
And flew away, leaving my troubles behind.

‘Twas just behind the woodshed,
One glorious summer day.
I heard a little peep, which was not far away.
I swooped down to take a look,
And saw a cardboard box that shook.
With my beak I pushed it over.
Underneath was a bird looking very sober.

"What’s wrong?" I asked it.
"I don’t have a mother.
Not even a brother!"
"Well what are you?" I asked afterward.
"Why! I’m a bird!"
"But you can’t be I am!" I replied.
"Well I’m a mockingbird. What are you ?" He cried.
"I’m a hummingbird, the best of the best!"
"Not true! I’ll put you to the test!"

It was in the middle of the summer during 1999 (when we had the horrible drought). I was eager to get home from running errands. As soon as I jumped out of the car and began to run, I noticed a bird sitting in the middle of our yard. I walked up to it and it jumped up. Then I noticed that she had been sitting on newly laid eggs that were blue with black spots. I looked up and she had spread out her wings, not to fly, but to reveal neon orange feathers as if to say, "Get away from my nest, I taste much better than a few eggs. Come chase me." She was hopping around and running like she was trying to get me away from her nest. I backed off and ran in the house.

I turned on the computer to research the bird. My dad said, "I’ve seen that bird when I was younger and went hunting with my dad. It is called a Killdeer." I typed in the word Killdeer and sure enough that was the bird I had just seen. It turned out that I had scared her off her nest while she was still laying eggs because when I first saw them there had been three, but the next day there were four. My family and I watched it for about two weeks, and one night, when I fed my pet dog Boots, I checked the nest. The mother bird wasn’t there so I figured that she went out to find food. When I looked in the nest, to my surprise, the eggs had hatched and there were four baby Killdeer.

I ran inside, told my parents and we all went to see them. But when we got outside, the mother bird was back and sleeping on her nest. We decided not to wake her, but she woke up anyway, jumped off her nest, spread out her neon orange feathers and began to hop around. She called out a high pitched chirp and would not stop. We peeked at the little babies, then went inside the house.