248 Birds Every Child Should Know 



along their long route. You can usually tell 

 a flock of plovers in flight by the crescent shape 

 of the rapidly moving mass. 



With a busy company of friends, the killdeer 

 haunts broad tracts of grassy land, near water- 

 uplands or lowlands, or marshy meadows beside 

 the sea. Scattered over a chosen feeding 

 ground, the plovers run about nimbly, nervously, 

 looking for trouble as well as food. Because 

 worms, which are their favourite supper, come 

 out of the groimd at nightfall, the birds 

 are especially active then. Grasshoppers, 

 crickets, and other insects content them during 

 the day. 



SEMIPALMATED PLOVER 



The killdeer, which is our commonest plover, 

 has a little cousin scarcely larger than an English 

 sparrow that is a miniature of himself, except 

 that the semipalmated (half-webbed) or ring- 

 necked plover has only one dark band across 

 the upper part of his white breast, while the 

 killdeer wears two black rings. This dainty 

 little beach bird has brownish-gray upper parts 

 so like the colour of wet sand, that, as he nuis 

 along over it, just in advance of the frothing 

 ripples, he is in perfect harmony with his sur- 

 roundings. Relying upon that fact for pro- 



