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 ODserve 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. Nowand 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, w'ho 
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 ! 
Pew Plovers with which I am acquainted, acquire their full plumage 
sooner than this species. Before December you can observe no difference 
