The Kill-Deer Plover. 



75 



and partial albino birds, — to be carefully protected, observed, and timed, — not to 

 be slaughtered at once and crammed into a cabinet, where they can teach us 

 absolutely nothing. When will English people learn this? But I desire to end 

 by explaining the point of this digression, that when I use the word "resident," 

 it is invariably with this reservation — that it is the species, not the individual, 

 which is resident — that the individual is probably migratory. 



Family- CHARADRIID.^. 



Kill-Deer Plover. 



/Egialitis vuii/era, LiNN. 



A CASUAL American wanderer, which gains both its English name " Kill- 

 Deer," (or " Kill-dee," as it is often written), and its specific Latin name, 

 from its loud and incessant cry. Two occurrences of this bird on our island are 

 on record: one near Christ Church, Hants, April, 1857, upon which authorities 

 look with some doubt; the other in the Scilly Islands, January 15th, 1885, about 

 which no doubt exists. It has not been elsewhere recorded as occurring in the 

 old world, except once doubtfully in Madeira. It is much larger than any of the 

 foregoing species, (length 9^ inches, closed wing 6^), and may be recognized in 

 all stages of plumage by the rufous upper parts (especially the rump), pale yellow 

 legs, which are long, and double black (or, in young birds, dusky) band right 

 across the chest. 



