killdeer

See also: kill-deer

English

Imitative of the bird's call.

killdeer (plural killdeers or killdeer)

A killdeer.

A North American plover (Charadrius vociferus) with a distinctive cry and territorial behavior that includes feigning injury to distract interlopers from the nest.
- 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger Poeple's" Country, Nebraska 2005, p. 50:
  A kill-deer, flying so low as to dip its wings, ever and anon alighted on the margin, its stilt-like legs half submerged as it ran hither and thither, now and then bending to dig in the sand with its long slender bill.

plover