BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 351 



their best and most constant friends in garden and field, and 

 if fully protected and left unmolested in its occupancy of the 

 fields it becomes as common a feature of the country home 

 as is the Lapwing in England. So far as its food habits are 

 now known it seems to be utterly harmless and very bene- 

 ficial — a beautiful and desirable bird to protect and cultivate. 



In the middle States and in the south it often builds its 

 nest in tilled fields, and follows the instruments of cultivation, 

 gleaning worms and insects from the furrow, like the Robin or 

 the Blackbird. When disturbed or alarmed its wild cry, killdee 

 dee dee deer, rings on the air as it files rapidly away or circles 

 about, exhibiting in turn the bright contrasting markings of its 

 breast and the lovely and striking hues of its back, wings and tail. 

 Its large, intelligent, carmine eyes seem to fit it for nocturnal 

 activity. In the fields of the south I frequently have started 

 it from its feeding grounds at night, and listened to its weird 

 and plaintive cry as it swept and circled about in the moon- 

 light. Like other species of Plover it often stands quite still 

 in the field, with head drawn in, uttering a plaintive cry when 

 approached. The hunter is not fond of it, for its cries alarm 

 other game. 



Prof. Samuel Aughey examined the stomach contents of 

 nine of these birds taken from May to September in Nebraska, 

 and found 258 locusts and 190 other insects. Only one had 

 taken grain, and of that only a few waste kernels. Nash states 

 that its food consists of earthworms and insects, of which 

 small beetles form the greater part, and that a brood of these 

 birds and their parents will relieve a farm of an enormous 

 number of insects daily. He has known stomachs of this 

 species to be completely filled with weevils taken from or- 

 chards.^ Eaton found it feeding on grasshoppers, beetles, 

 caterpillars and a few water insects. Throughout the country, 

 wherever the KiUdeer is found, it is very destructive to weevils, 

 some species of which cost the farmers of the United States 

 millions of dollars annually. The Killdeer takes weevils from 

 ploughed fields as well as from orchards, and it is one of the 

 enemies of the Mexican cotton boll weevil. 



» Naah, C. W.: The Birds of Ontario, 1909 p. 25 (Bull. 173, Ontario Dept. of Agr.). 



