A medium-sized plover.Adults have a brown back and wings, a white belly, and a white breast with two black bands. The rump is tawny orange. The face and cap are brown with a white forehead. They have an orange-red eyering.
The chicks (photo on right) are patterned almost identically to the adults, and are precocial — able to move around right after hatching.
A shorebird you can see without going to the beach, Killdeer are graceful plovers common to lawns, golf courses, athletic fields, and parking lots. These tawny birds run across the ground in spurts, stopping with a jolt every so often to check their progress, or to see if they’ve startled up any insect prey. Their voice, a far-carrying, excited kill-deer, is a common sound even after dark, often given in flight as the bird circles overhead on slender wings.
The killdeer frequently uses a "broken wing act" to distract predators from the nest.
Killdeer are larger and lankier than Semipalmated & Wilson's plovers. The double breast band distinguishes adult Killdeer from these two species (and all other plovers). However, juvenile Killdeer have only one breast band and are often confused with these two species
Semipalmated Plover
