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Killdeer

Status Fairly common transient, uncommon in summer, rare in winter. Breeds. It generally appears first in March (average 23 March, earliest 1 March, assuming early March birds to be normal migrants). It is an increasingly regular breeding bird, especially in the southwestern half of the province. Migrants are most frequent in September and October with regular stragglers to November and December. Late fall individuals are thought to be reverse migrants from further south. Birds have wintered in all parts of the province from Cape Breton Island to Yarmouth County, and others have appeared through the winter, sometimes in association with storms.

Description Length: 23-28 cm. Adults: Back and crown grayish brown; rump and upper tail bright rufous; forehead, throat, ring around neck, patch above and behind eye, and underparts white; double band of black crosses breast; legs usually flesh coloured, but variable.

Breeding Nest: On the ground; a depression scraped out in an open pasture, cultivated field or gravel pit usually a considerable distance from the coast; lined sparsely with dry grass. Eggs: 4; buffy white, spotted and irregularly marked with chocolate-brown chiefly around the larger end. A nest found at Gaspereau, Kings County, on 7 May 1968 contained the usual four eggs. The sitting bird ran from the nest when I was not closer than about 35 m, indicating that the eggs were fresh or nearly so. The nest was in an open, stony pasture inland from the coast. Another that year, at Black River, Kings County, was similarly located in an open field. It held four eggs in which incubation was, presumably, well advanced because the bird sat "close" when the nest was approached. A nest at Chebogue Point, Yarmouth County, contained two eggs on 7 July 1967, obviously a second nesting attempt. I have never known this bird to select a concealed nest site.

Range Breeds from southeastern Alaska, southern Mackenzie Valley, and central Quebec to western Newfoundland and south to the West Indies and southern Mexico; also in Peru and northern Chile. Winters from southern British Columbia, the Ohio Valley and Nova Scotia, southward to Colombia and Peru.

Remarks Although it is sometimes seen along our beaches during migration, mingling in the flocks of others of its close relatives, the Killdeer is essentially a bird of the interior, frequenting wet fields, sloughs and pasturelands.

Its name is derived from its call, a sharply enunciated kill-dee kill-dee, often heard when the bird rises in alarm. The distinctive black double band across its otherwise white breast provides an excellent field mark.

It has apparently expanded its former range in recent years.