What is a Killdeer?

The Upper East Side of Manhattan had Pale Male and Lola, two red-tailed hawks who made their home  on a fancy co-op building.  In St. Paul we have a tiny little killdeer who keeps getting blown off the top of our two-story office building, only to be captured by kind-hearted tenants and returned to its mama.

I learned that a Killdeer is a bird that is more developed when hatched than other baby birds and is able to run around but not able to fly.  Grown Killdeers have a trick they play to protect their young; they will pretend to have a broken wing to attract predators and lead them away from the babies.

As you can hear from my co-workers' voices, grown women in offices love it when the young of any species are brought in to visit.

A visit to Farmers' Market

Last Friday I went to the Farmers' Market at St. Luke's, hoping to find some rhurbarb, but all they had were plants, a few bunches of asparagus, and frozen chickens.  I guess Lowertown is the place to go for a fuller array of vegetables in early spring.

I know that St. Luke's has been renamed and is now known as St. Thomas More.  How long will it take for us to adopt the new name in our everyday conversation?  Most of us referred to Marshall Fields as Daytons from the time Daytons purchased Marshall Fields until the terrible day when Macy's took over.  Now nobody calls it Daytons anymore, and even the Mary Tyler Moore statue (I know it's across the river) looks a little sadder these days.

 

Not the prettiest piece of art.  Compare it to our statue of F Scott Fitzgerald in Rice Park.