TEE, KILLDEBER. 637 
wing but unceasing stridor, and take their places in the van. The birds be- 
lieve themselves extremely clever as they lead you off by alternate flights 
and sprints, and you may hear them indulge from time to time in a low rapid 
titter, feeeee-t, which you may be sure is quite at your expense. All this 
racket is bad enough at best, and one may be really sorry to have intruded 
at first, but when the whole operation is gone thru with again the next time 
you happen that way, and when you know that the young are long since 
flying, all this fuss 
and outcry is dis- 
tinctly annoying. 
One feels as if the 
Killdeer had con- 
tracted the habit of 
yellow - journalism 
and couldn’t let go. 
The Killdeer nests 
in fallow fields, 
plowed ground, and 
open prairie, or else 
upon the open bars 
Of sia eis Courses, 
never very far from 
water, but by no 
means confined to it. 
The four eggs are 
invariably placed 
with the little ends 
together, so that they Be 
may occupy the least 
room possible; and 
this appears quite Redrawn by Allan Brooks from Photo by the Author. 
necessary when we ENTICEMENT. 
note how large they 
are in comparison with the parent bird. Sometimes a little grass or crumbled 
bark or dried rabbits’ dung serves for the lining, but often the eggs are laid 
upon the bare ground. Once, in Yakima County, I found what I think must 
be regarded as the ideal environment for these eggs. An upland gravel-bed, 
peculiar to that region, was composed of disintegrating fragments of a light 
brown lava mingled with the soil. Each pebble of the bed was scrawled and 
spotted by a black lichen, as tho tar had been carelessly flung about. Upon 
this bed reposed four Killdeer eggs. When you saw them you saw them, 
because their outlines were rounded instead of angular; but the moment the 
