BOARD OF GAME AND FISH COMMISSIONERS 
89 
At present this Plover can be considered only as a rare and irregular migrant 
anywhere in the state. It has, in fact, become so scarce everywhere throughout 
its range that ornithologists generally consider that it is approaching total extinc¬ 
tion and doubt whether the most rigorous protection can save it. If this comes 
true, it is another sacrifice of a noble and valuable bird to the greed of man. 
Its habits made it an easy victim and the tales that are told of the vast numbers 
that were annually killed as it traversed the coasts and especially the interior of 
North America are almost beyond belief. Audubon’s account of being present one 
day, early in the spring of 1821, near New Orleans when forty-eight thousand of 
these birds were killed between dawn and nightfall by an army of hunters who 
awaited the arrival of the hosts from their flight across the Gulf, is but one 
of many similar tragical happenings that befell the Golden Plover in its earlier 
encounters with man. 
The Golden Plover, while here, in common with its relative, the Black-bellied, 
fed principally on prairies and fields where the vegetation was scantiest and soon 
learned that its diet of insects and worms was most readily gleaned on burned- 
over areas and ploughed fields, so that it was in such places that these birds 
were usually to be found. When first arrived they were tame and unsuspicious 
and answered quickly, again and again, an imitation of their soft, whistling notes, 
paying little heed to a report of a gun or the presence of a gunner. It is within 
the memory of the writer when great flocks of these birds assembled in the fall 
on the then unsettled prairie south of Minneapolis, about where the Steel Sc 
Machinery plant now stands, and where they paid heavy toll to numerous hunters 
of those days as they circled round and round seemingly wholly indifferent to the 
devastation that was inflicted upon their closely massed ranks at almost every 
turn they made. 
KILLDEER; KILLDEER PLOVER. This still abundant and generally dis¬ 
tributed summer resident of our state needs little special mention. Its loud and 
penetrating notes— kill-dee, kill-dee —are familiar to almost every one and at 
times not without an annoying feature. The Killdeer is an early arrival, coming 
usually with the first Robins and Bluebirds about the middle of March, rarelv a 
few days earlier. It remains until late in October. 
The nest is placed almost anywhere in a field, pasture, corn field or garden 
and is concealed by its very openness and the dark, blotched character of the 
eggs. The birds are fond of mud-flats and the muddy shores of shallow lakes and 
ponds but feed chiefly on the uplands. Their great value to the agriculturist has 
already been described in the general account of the family. In the eastern states 
they have been largely killed off, but they are still common with us and should be 
continuously and permanently protected as a most important insectivorous bird. 
SEMIPALMATED PLOVER; RING-NECKED PLOVER. This little Plover 
is a migrant through Minnesota but has never at any time been very abundant 
and of late years has been reported only occasionally. Mr. J. M. Eheim's state¬ 
ment in Fins, Feathers and Fur, No. 14, June, 1918, that he saw twenty of these 
birds near Hutchinson, McLeod County, on May 18, 1918 and that they were 
common the next day is an exceptional and unexpected record. 
Dr. Hatch’s account in Notes on the Birds of Minnesota suggests that it was 
fairly common and of regular occurrence in earlier times but the statement that it 
nested repeatedly near Minneapolis seems highly improbable as its only known 
