. Country life reader . o discover,and when, at last, you have by chance discovered it, inthe middle of the open pasture or rocky clearing, you aresurprised to find thatthere is hardly any pre-tense for a nest at all—only a few roughstraws in a slight hol-bw in the ground, cov-ered by the four dark,muddy-colored eggs,Vvhich are always ar-ranged with theirsmaller ends togetherin the centre. As soon as the eggsare hatched, the youngbirds, like young chick-ens, are able to run;and a nest which con-tains four killdeers eggs to-day may be entirely bare and empty sometimes happens, in y
. Country life reader . o discover,and when, at last, you have by chance discovered it, inthe middle of the open pasture or rocky clearing, you aresurprised to find thatthere is hardly any pre-tense for a nest at all—only a few roughstraws in a slight hol-bw in the ground, cov-ered by the four dark,muddy-colored eggs,Vvhich are always ar-ranged with theirsmaller ends togetherin the centre. As soon as the eggsare hatched, the youngbirds, like young chick-ens, are able to run;and a nest which con-tains four killdeers eggs to-day may be entirely bare and empty sometimes happens, in your walks afield, that, withoutbeing aware of it, you approach either near the nest orclose to the hiding-place of one of the newly hatched suddenly your attention is attracted by one of theold birds only a few feet away, whose limping gait anddrooping wing give him every appearance of being badlywounded. Very naturally you give chase. The woundedbird flutters o£f^ and you follow farther and still Meadow-lark. 342 COUNTRY LIFE READER Then, when you are almost sure that you have him, he sud-denly recovers, and the wild ^Killdeer, killdeer from theother side of the field seems, like a peal of derisive mockery,to warn you how simply and easily you have been fooled. Of the birds whichare found in the fieldsin later spring, proba-bly none are betterknown to the farmersboys than the crown, fromwhich the king-birdgets his name, is notvery conspicuous, but ifyou should brush backthe feathers of the head,you would find a hid-den crown patch ofbright ruby feathers,the only touch of colorthat he has. As foracting like a king or anabsolute ruler, the hawks and crows and blue jays, ifthey were called upon, could give abundant evidence ofthat. It is not an uncommon thing, in later summer, tosee a pair of king-birds in pursuit of an intruding crow,one perched on his back and pecking furiously at the feath-ers of his neck and head, while the other circles
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