The Semipalmated Plover 
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 Ivilldeers 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! 
Taken in Merced County 
DEJECTION 
Photo by the Author 
No. 257 
Semipalmated Plover 
A. O. 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 
IJIO 
