Puzzled By Birds 2: Day Eight

From the finish line, Kenn and Kimberly write: Now we’re on the eighth day of our bird puzzle, and almost the whole creature is now visible. Unless the bird has its name tattooed on one of the few spots that’s still hidden, we’re seeing about as much as we’re going to see. So this is the point where the game contestant says:

"I’d like to buy a fowl."

And we fill in the last remaining pieces.

With the entire bird visible, it’s quite straightforward -- the only North American bird with that two-banded chest pattern is the Killdeer, that abundant, noisy plover of fields and open ground. We purposely kept the second chest band covered until late in the game, to give you a chance to focus on other features.

We were pleased to get dozens of responses to the quiz. A few brave souls even guessed on the first day, although no one got it right until a couple of days later than that. In the early returns, Mountain Plover was the most popular choice, and that was a good guess on the basis of what was visible. Mountain Plover is also brown above and white below, the pattern of the back of its head is similar, and it also lives in dry grassy places. Upland Sandpiper also got some votes, undoubtedly on the basis of habitat.

The first person to get the correct answer was Janet Creamer, a fine naturalist from Indiana and a contributor to two excellent and worthwhile sites, the Indy Parks Nature Blog and Midwest Native Plants, Gardens, and Wildlife. Looking at the habitat and at the small amount of the bird visible on the third day, Janet deduced that Killdeer was the most likely identification.

Others who came in shortly afterwards with the correct answer included Carol at Wildlife Around Us, Kirk Mona, Barb Myers, "Dave C," Marcel Such, Joel Such, Jim Royer, and Barbara Coley. Ohio’s well-known nature expert Jim McCormac took a look, a few days in, and identified it with immediate confidence: "Killdeer!" We knew we couldn’t fool Jim for long. And many more people got the answer right as more of the bird was revealed.

Thank you to everyone who took part; we hope you found it more entertaining than aggravating! Best wishes for enjoying birds out in the field the rest of this month. We hope that we’ll see many of you at the Midwest Birding Symposium, which is about to start at Lakeside, Ohio, practically in our back yard.