Killdee

There in the dim, sweet woods, with the smoke curling up into the leafy masses above, the sunlight just dropping upon the lake, the killdee, the robin, and the blue jay crying in the still, cool morning air. ❋ Various (N/A)

It is probable that plover killdee should be substituted in the foregoing lists of clans, for the name clearly refers to the killdee's habit of running along the clean sand at the water's edge. ❋ O. M. McPherson (1915)

He's pine-blank as happy now as a killdee by a mill-race. ❋ Unknown (1910)

It would be better than golf -- to sit with him on the store porch on a sunny day listening to the mill rumbling by the creek and the killdee whistling in the meadow, to watch the shadows crawl along the mountains, and now and then to hear Bill Hansen say something. ❋ Nelson Lloyd (1903)

Below us a stone mill grumbled over its unending task, and from the meadows came the blithe call of the killdee. ❋ Nelson Lloyd (1903)

Let the wailing of the killdee be the only sound we hear: ❋ James Whitcomb Riley (1882)

He ran along before the children as nimbly as a killdee, talking and laughing all the time. ❋ Joel Chandler Harris (1878)

The noise of the talking and laughing and the formless progress of the mob hushed the nearer night voices of the fields and woods; but from a distance the shuddering cry of a screech-owl could be heard; and the melancholy call of a killdee in a pasture beside the creek. ❋ William Dean Howells (1878)

But when I at's him ag'in, to lock legs or kick ankles, dar he's 'way off yander, a-tippin' it on his toes, like a killdee. ❋ Morrison Heady (1872)

"That's all right," he continued, as the son closed in on me: "I kin handle the little killdee by myself .... ❋ Tony Sarg (1910)

Ez I war a-ridin 'along through the woods this mornin' I kem acrost a striplin 'lad a-walkin' through the undergrowth ez onconsarned ez a killdee an 'ez nimble. An' under his chin war a fiddle, an 'his head war craned down ter it. " ❋ Mary Noailles Murfree (1886)