THE KILDEER PLOVER. 209 



to move with the utmost possible agility. Their ordinary posture when 

 standing, might be called stiff, were they not so beautiful in form and colour- 

 ing. When pursued over a large space, they are able to lead you from one 

 spot to another more than twenty times in the course of an hour; and the 

 more you follow them, the more shy do they become, until wearied and 

 hungry, as the fox said of the grapes, you will probably begin to think them 

 poor and insipid after all. 



Now you see the Kildee wading in the water, and observe how it splashes 

 it about. Down it lays itself, and with fluttering wings, seems to enjoy the 

 sight of the drops trickling over its silky back. Now dripping and almost 

 soaked to the skin, it retires to the warm earth, to dry its plumage and clear 

 it of insects. 



This species breeds in Louisiana about the beginning of April; in the 

 Middle States a full month later, as well as in the Western Country and 

 farther north. Not one, however, has ever been found breeding in the low 

 lands of South Carolina, although these birds remain there until the begin- 

 ning of May. The nests are various, some being merely a hollow scooped 

 in the bare ground, while at other times the Kildee searches for a place on 

 the edge of a pond, forms a hollow, and constructs a nest of grass, at the 

 foot of a thick bunch of plants. Now and then small pebbles and fragments 

 of shells are raised in the form of a rim around the eggs, on which the sit- 

 ting bird is seen as if elevated two or three inches. Wilson saw nests of 

 this kind; so have I; and the circumstance appeared as strange to me as that 

 of the birds not breeding in the low lands of the Carolinas. The eggs are 

 almost always four, pyriform, well pointed at the small end, an inch and five- 

 eighths in length, an inch and one-eighth in diameter at the broadest part, 

 and of a deep cream-colour, pretty generally marked all over with small 

 irregular blotches of purplish-brown and black. The young, as soon as 

 hatched, run about. At this period, or during incubation, the parents, who 

 sit alternately on the eggs, never leaving them to the heat of the sun, are 

 extremely clamorous at sight of an enemy. The female droops her wings, 

 emits her plaintive notes, and endeavours by every means she can devise to 

 draw you from the nest or young. The male dashes over you in the air, in 

 the manner 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 



