Killdeer Charadrius vociferus

The Killdeer, an Almanac

• The Killdeer is counted, in these parts, a reader of a man's intentions.
• There is a stone in Blackthorpe holler churchyard the Killdeer will not light upon.
• By the elder almanacs, the Killdeer and the mill-owl keep an old quarrel no man recalls the start of.
• Those up the holler will tell you that the Killdeer's cry before noon foretells a frost out of season, and after it, a letter.
• The naturalist Prewitt classed it among the lunar-governed fowl, noting that the specimen, when galvanized, exhibited a plaintive cry, to the astonishment of the assembly.

Folklore, invented on the spot — not to be believed.