KILLDEER, a common and well-known American Plover, so called in imitation of its whistling cry, the Charadrius vociferιisoi Linnaeus, and the Aegialitis vocifera of modern ornithologists. About the size of a Snipe, it is mostly sooty-brown above, but showing a bright buff on the tail coverts, and in flight a white bar on the wings; 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 Doterels, forming the genus Aegialitis of Boie. Mostly wintering in the south or only on the sea-shore of the more northern States, in spring 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 of the ground, 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 indeed the custom of most Limicoline birds. The parents exhibit the greatest anxiety for their offspring on the approach of an intruder: the lien runs off with drooping wings and plaintive cries, while the cock sweeps around, gesticulating with loud and angry vociferations. It is the best-known bird of its Family in the United States, throughout which it is found in all suitable districts, but less abundantly in the north-east than further south or west. In Canada it does not range further to the northward than 56° N. lat., and it is not known to occur in Greenland, or hardly in Labrador, though it is a passenger in Newfoundland every spring and autumn. 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 ...