KILLDEER

This article appears in Volume V15, Page 795 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: KHA-KRI

KILLDEER , a common American

plover

PLOVER

, so called in imitation of its whistling cry, the Charadrius vociferus of Linnaeus, and the Aegialitis vocifera of modern ornithologists. About the size of a snipe, it is mostly sooty-brown above, but showing a

bright

BRIGHT, JOHN (1811-188g)
BRIGHT, SIR CHARLES TILSTON

buff on the tail coverts, and in flight a white bar on thewings; beneath it is pure white except two pectoral bands of deep black. It is one of the finest as well as the largest of the group commonly known as ringed plovers or ring dotterels,' forming the genus Aegialitis of Boie. Mostly wintering in the

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

or only on the sea-shore of the more northern states, in

spring

SPRING (from " to spring," " to leap or jump up," " burst out," O. Eng., springau, a common Teut. word, cf. Ger. springer, possibly allied to Gr. QnrFpxecOac, to move rapidly)

it spreads widely over the interior, breeding on the newly ploughed lands or on open grass-fields. The nest is made in a slight hollow, and is often surrounded with small pebbles and fragments of shells. Here the hen lays her pear-shaped, stone-coloured eggs, four in number, and always arranged with their pointed ends touching each other, as is the custom of most Limicoline birds. The parents exhibit the greatest anxiety for their offspring on the approach of an intruder. It is the best-known bird of its family in the United States, where it is less abundant in the north-

east

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

than farther

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

or west. In Canada it does not range farther northward than 56 N.; it is not known in Greenland, and hardly in Labrador, though it is a passenger in

Newfoundland

NEWFOUNDLAND

every

spring

SPRING (from " to spring," " to leap or jump up," " burst out," O. Eng., springau, a common Teut. word, cf. Ger. springer, possibly allied to Gr. QnrFpxecOac, to move rapidly)

and autumn.2 In winter it finds its way to Bermuda and to some of the Antilles, but it is not recorded from any of the islands to the windward of

Porto

PORTO

Rico. In the other direction, however, it travels down the Isthmus of Panama and the west coast of South America to Peru. The killdeer has several other congeners in America, among which may be noticed Ae. semipalmata, curiously resembling the

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

ringed

plover

PLOVER

of the Old World, Ae. hiaticula, except that it has its toes-connected by a web at the base; and Ae. nivosa, a bird inhabiting the western parts of both the American continents, which in the

opinion

OPINION (Lat. opinio, from opinari, to think)

of some authors is only a local form of the widely spread Ae. alexandrina or cantiana, best known as Kentish plover, from its discovery near Sandwich towards the end of the 18th century, though it is far more abundant in many other parts of the Old World. The common ringed plover, Ae. hiaticula, has many of the habits of the killdeer, but is much less often found away from the sea-shore, though a few colonies may be found in dry warrens in certain parts of England many miles from the coast, and in

Lapland

LAPLAND, or LAPPLAND

at a still greater distance. In such localities it paves its nest with small stones (whence it is locally known as " Stone hatch "), a habit almost unaccountable unless regarded as an inherited instinct from shingle-haunting ancestors.
(A. N.)

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