The Semipalmated Plover 



Taken in Merced Count 



earliest springtime in Illinois or Ohio or Massachusetts. At such time the 

 shrill cry of the Killdeer shouting his name is a welcome omen, when it cuts 

 across the frosty sky. His unquiet spirit it is, also, 

 which flits about on moonlight nights. He moves 

 restlessly from pool to pool and shouts as he moves, 

 —a sort of protest, I suppose, against the coming of 

 the moon madness. 



Dry seasons in Califor- 

 nia, winter seasons, that is, 

 are often marked by an in- 

 vasion of Killdeers upon our 

 lawns. The winter of 1917- 

 18, for example, saw hun- 

 dreds of these plucky dears 

 deployed over the lawns of 

 Montecito, or else culling 

 bugs off little two-by-four 

 plots in the center of town. 

 Think of it! a Killdeer! that 

 arrogant tyrant of the pas- 

 tures who has upbraided us 

 by every epithet found in 

 Roget's Thesaurus, and who has cursed us, besides, in more languages than 

 we know the names of — this termagant of the meadows meekly pattering 

 here over the grass and turning up a deprecatory eye as he scuttles across 

 our bit of a front walk! Arragh! ye impudent spalpeen, I've a moind to 

 have ye arristed ! 



DEJECTION 



No. 257 



Semipalmated Plover 



A. 0. U. No. 274. Charadrius semipalmatus Bonaparte. 



Synonyms. — Ring Plover. Ring-neck. 



Description. — Adult in summer: A narrow black band across breast and 

 continuous around hind-neck; fore-crown and a band on side of head below eye to 

 bill, and meeting fellow on extreme forehead, black mixed with brown; forehead, 

 indistinct superciliary line, lower eye-lid, chin, and throat, continuous with narrow 

 band across cervix, and remaining underparts, white; crown and nape, back, etc., 

 bright grayish brown; upper tail-coverts and base of tail a little lighter, tail blackish 

 subterminally, the outer pair of feathers pure white, the others decreasingly white- 

 tipped; greater wing-coverts white-tipped; primaries blackish, the basal and subterminal 



I3IO 



