158 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
“The land call of the kildeer—‘ kildeer, kildeer, kildeer’-—is 
- well known to those who are familiar with the river sides and the 
rough and broken pastures in the less cleared portions of the 
country. The kildeer is the first cousin of the spotted sandpiper or 
peetweet, and the nest and eggs of the two species are similar. The 
eggs are always arranged with the pointed ends together, and as the 
_young, like young chickens, are able to run as soon as hatched, the 
nest is not elaborate, being composed of only a few dried straws 
placed in a shallow depression in the ground. — If you approach the 
nest or young of the kildeer the old bird adopts the ingenious 
artifice of pretending to be lame, limping and trailing the wings, in 
order to attract your attention and draw you offin pursuit. A short 
time ago I read an interesting account of the kildeer’s nesting opera- 
tions, written by an invalid who watched them closely. When the 
young were hatched the mother bird used the empty shells to carry 
water to the nest to wash the fledgelings off, and afterwards destroyed 
all traces of the shells by dropping them into the stream.” 
This section of the lecture was concluded with an account of 
some of the common migrants, notably the white-crowned and the 
white-throated sparrows. 
In treating the birds of later spring the lecturer divided them 
into three groups, classifying them according to beauty of song, 
brilliancy of plumage and peculiarity in nesting habit. Under the 
first group were considered the brown thrasher, cat-bird, Wilson’s 
thrush, wood thrush, bobolink, and rose-breasted grosbeak. The 
song of the Wilson’s thrush, for illustration, was described as follows : 
‘“'The weirdest music of spring-time is, without doubt, the song 
of the Wilson’s thrush or Veery. The leaves are already coming 
out in the thickets when I hear it for the first time in the evening 
twilight on the hill-side. I do not know why, but the peculiar alto 
diminuendo seems to suit with the growing dusk, and with the 
mystery of the bird itself, for as I pass from thicket to thicket the 
song appears likewise to advance or recede, until on every side of 
me, from hill to hill, runs the weird incantation, and the whole circle 
of the valley is for the moment over flowing with eddying waves of 
song.” 
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