The Killdeer 



Taken xn Kern County 



As a matter of fact he has. He has become obsessed with a passion 

 for denunciation. The excitements of the nesting season have spoiled 

 him. He has racket and objurgation upon the brain, and long after his 



own chicks have joined the howling 

 chorus, the Killdeer warns and hec- 

 tors and incites sedition generally 

 throughout the rest of the bird 

 world. Or, in scientific parlance, 

 the normal reactions of the breeding 

 cycle persist, and are transferred to 

 a broader field. Sportsmen hate the 

 Killdeer and shoot him on sight as a 

 marplot and general nuisance. 

 Stalking game is impossible with 

 such an alarmist on the job. Nor is 

 the case any better with the bird 

 photographer, that most innocuous 

 of mortals. My final and over- 

 whelming lesson came when, on 

 October nth, 1913, I had sighted 

 on the grounds of the Empire Gun 

 Club a small company of the rare 

 Pectoral Sandpipers (Pisobia macu- 

 lata). It was the opportunity of a 

 lifetime hereabouts, and left to them- 

 selves the birds would have proved 

 amenable to those methods of grad- 

 ual approach and disarming of anxi- 

 ety which are usually so successful 

 with the Shore-birds. But in this 

 instance an officious Killdeer set 

 himself the task of thwarting all my 

 plans. Not content with effecting 

 his own escape, noisy enough in all 

 conscience, the Killdeer turned back 

 to warn his neighbors, and if a single 

 one of the Pectorals did not dutifully 

 heed the first alarm, the Killdeer 

 returned forthwith and dived men- 

 acingly at the delinquent's head. 

 He did this not once or twice, but persistently, insomuch that the "Kriek- 

 ers" became wilder and wilder, and my last hour's effort with them was 



HEAD ON 



Photo by the Author 



1302 



