194 KILDEER PLOVER. 



the nest or young. The njale dashes over you in the air, in the man- 

 ner of the European Lapwing, and vociferates all the remonstrances of 

 an angry parent whose family is endangered. If you cannot find pity 

 for the poor birds at such a time, you may take up their eggs and see their 

 distress ; but if you be at all so tender-hearted as I would wish you to 

 be, it will be quite unnecessary for me to recommend mercy ! 



Few Plovers with which I am acquainted, acquire their full plumage 

 sooner than this species. Before December you can observe no difference 

 between the young birds and their parents ; nay by this time, like most 

 other species, the former are as fully able to fly as at any other period. 



While I was residing in Pennsylvania, the son of my tenant the mil- 

 ler was in the habit of catching newly-hatched birds of every sort, to 

 bait his fish-hooks. I had rather peremptorily remonstrated against this 

 barbarous practice, although, I believe, without effect. One morning I 

 met him returning from the shores of the Perkioming Creek, with his hat 

 full of young Kildees. He endeavoured to avoid me, but I made direct- 

 ly up to him, peeped into his hat and saw the birds. On this I begged 

 of him to go back and restore the poor things to their parents, which he 

 reluctantly did. Never had I felt more happy than I did when I saw 

 the young Plovers run off and hide under cover of the stones. 



The Kildee seems to be remarkably attached to certain locaKties at 

 particular periods. Whilst at General Hernandez's in East Florida, I 

 accidentally wounded one near a barn on the plantation of my accomplish- 

 ed host. Yet it returned to the same spot for the ten days that I re- 

 mained there, although it always flew off when I approached it. 



The food of this species consists of earth-worms, grass-hoppers, 

 crickets, and coleopterous insects, as well as small Crustacea, whether of 

 salt or fresh water, and snails. Now and then they may be seen thrust- 

 ing their bills into the mud about oysters, in search of some other food. 

 During autumn, they run about the old fields and catch an insect which 

 the Blue Bird has been watching with anxious care from the top of a 

 withering mullein stalk. They run briskly after the ploughman, to pick 

 up the worms that have been turned out of their burrows. Now stand- 

 ing on the grassy meadow, after a shower, you see them patting the moist 

 ground, to force out its inhabitants. During winter, you meet with them 

 on elevated ground, or along the margins of the rivers ; but wherever 

 you observe one about to pick up its food, you clearly see its body mov- 

 ing in a see-saw manner on the joints of the legs, until the former being 



