Its Latin name, Charadrius vociferous, says it all: noisy plover. The killdeer, long-legged like its shorebird cousins, is America's most familiar and widespread plover, calling out "ka-dee, ka-dee, ...

It would be proper to describe the killdeer as pedestrian, in the sense that it goes about on foot, which is the literal and original meaning of the word. The word’s more recent use, to mean ...

Fifty years ago, almost every child growing up in rural North America knew the call of a killdeer. A loud "K'deer, K'deer, K'deer" would announce his presence in open fields, pastures, wetlands, ...