Page:Bird-lore Vol 01.djvu/49

 == A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE

DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS

'''BY DR. THOS. S. ROBERTS'''

Director Department of Birds, Natural History Survey of Minnesota With photographs from Nature by the Author (Concluded from page )

URNING reluctantly from the attractive little Chickadee family, described in the preceding number of this magazine, we will next seek the acquaintance of a bird of entirely different feather, and, what is of more moment to the bird photographer, of entirely different disposition.

The Killdeer Plover, perhaps from his close kinship to the fraternity of game birds, has come to regard man and all human devices with deep suspicion, and to get on terms of close fellowship with him is no easy matter. While not himself an usual object of the sportsman's effort, owing to his lean body and indifferent savor, he is the immediate relative of those much sought-after birds, the Golden and the Black-bellied Plover. Unlike these more aristocratic members of the Plover group, the Killdeer does not retire to semi-arctic fastnesses to rear its brood, but nests wherever found throughout the eastern United States. Its ever-restless nature and loud alarm, “killdee, killdee,” as it moves from place to place, or circles round and round, always at a safe distance, together with its common occurrence throughout populated as well as wild regions, makes this plebeian well-known to every country lad and the bane of every would-be stealthy Nimrod. So noisily persistent is its outcry that it has been dubbed by ornithologists vocifera—Ægialitis vocifera—and a most appropriate appellation it is.

Like many loquacious people, Mr. and Mrs. Killdeer have a rather lazy vein in their makeup, and spend but little time or effort nest building. A little depression lined with a few bits of stick or