THE KILLDEER. r>03 



so well expressed by his common name, as scarcely to need 

 further description. Then, even at midnight, while the 

 snow is yet on the ground, you may hear his stirring call 

 as he passes by for regions still farther north. And did 

 you ever hear him without recalling the blooming meadow 

 and the brook? I admire his taste in locating his summer 

 home, in the clover, by some rippling streamlet. Altogether 

 unique, too, is the style of the nest. That circular arrange- 

 ment of smooth pebbles, peculiar bits of wood, or fragments 

 of shells, is wholly primitive, reminding one of cromlechs and 

 cairns. Inside this little circle, at once so simple and so 

 artistic, the four eggs are placed, the small points of the 

 conical forms touching each other at the center. About 

 1.45X1.05, they are of a dark, rich cream-color, well spot- 

 ted and blotched with blackish-brown beautifully in har- 

 mony with the ground on which they lie. Nest and eggs 

 seem like a natural appurtenance of the field. Occasionally, 

 however, the Killdeer seeks to be in fashion, and builds a 

 nest of dried grasses, or, becoming careless, simply adopts 

 a depression in the ground. Of all the maternal demon- 

 strations so peculiar to Plovers and Sandpipers, none are 

 more emphatic than those of the Killdeer. Fairly rolling 

 and tumbling on the ground, the mother-bird will spread 

 her tail and beat the ground with her expanded wings, cry- 

 ing oh, dear, dear, dear, dear, till the hardest heart must 

 relent under her beseeching tones. In this attitude she 

 gives one the full impression of her beautiful colors. Fore- 

 head, below the black band between the eyes, eye-brows, 

 and entire under parts, white; upper parts yellowish or red- 

 dish-brown; ring round the breast, and a broader one 

 round the neck, jet-black; wings dusky, marked with white; 

 the dusky tail, shading into black toward the reddish and 

 white tips, and flanked with light red, white and dusky, is 



