The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

The Killdeer [Charadrius vociferus], is the largest of the ringed plovers, and the only plover with a double breast band.

In flight, the Killdeer's long, pointed, slender wings have conspicuous white wing stripes. Killdeer frequent a variety of open habitats such as fields, meadows, gravel bars, and mudflats throughout the United States and most of Canada. Their diet includes snails, grasshoppers, worms, beetles, and other invertebrates. They can often be seen in fall in groups of four to 12 birds.

Killdeer nest on gravel roads, beaches, and along ponds and rivers. A small depression in the gravel serves as the nest site, where they lay four to six blackish-brown eggs, which hatch in 22 to 28 days. The chicks are precocial and walk out of the nest as soon as their feathers are dry. When a Killdeer's nest is threatened the parents will employ the "broken-wing display" to temp a predator away from the nest. Kill-deer, kill-deer is their call, and they were named using the Greek convention of "onomatopoeia," which translates to "imitation of sound."

A group of Killdeer are referred to as a "ponderance," or a "season" of Killdeer. For more Killdeer images visit http://abirdsingsbecauseithasasong.com/recent-journeys.