The Killdeer 
S'?- & 
Taken tn 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- 
HHHH 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 held. 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 iith, 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 
