We’re giving you fun coloring activities! Some birds like to take a vacation and visit Ohio during summer. You might spot them in our state throughout the year, but the birds featured here are most prevalent during summertime.

A plover, the killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) gets its name from the call it makes, an excited kill-dee! Killdeer have a diet of mainly insects, earthworms and sometimes seeds. They’re also known to be opportunistic foragers, and will also eat tree frogs or dead minnows.

Because killdeer make their nests in open fields, flat areas with short vegetation, gravel or on rooftops, they may encounter many threats. Killdeer will often put on a remarkable display to protect their young. Adult killdeer will feign an injury, particularly pretending to have a broken wing, dragging a wing on the ground and making a distress call to lure predators away from the nest. Once the predator is far enough away from a nest, the killdeer is miraculously healed and flies away (not without making a shrill kill-dee, of course).

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