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The killdeer is a commonly found shore bird that inhabits the area between southern Canada and South
America. As with all plovers, its soft contour feathers with barbs and barbules impart a sleek appearance to
its body while its down feathers insulate it from the winter cold and the summer heat. The male's loud shrill,
which seems to say kill-deer, warns other males away from his territory. Ornithologists do not consider the
killdeer a true songbird because its throat muscles are not structured to make melodious notes.
Killdeers are distinguished by the two black bands that mark their chest and neck. Camouflaged by their pro-
tective grayish brown pigment, killdeers build nests that cradle the eggs and the young in shallow depres-
sions in fields and open meadows. Because their nests lie directly on the ground, the young are able to run
about as soon as they hatch. Killdeer are incubatory creatures and brood their own babies. When a predator
approaches the nest or the bird's young, the mother tries to distract the intruder by dragging one of her wings
as if it were injured. Farmers are particularly fond of killdeers because they feed on insects that damage
crops. Because whole flocks of killdeers in the wild have vanished due to overhunting, game laws have been
enacted to protect these plovers from poaching.
Text 4. Read, translate and retell.
During the Middle Ages, societies were based on military relationships, as landowners formed their own foot
armies into which they drafted their tenants and hired hands. The infantry that fought its way forward against
the opposition engaged in heavy ground battles that proved costly in the ratio of losses to wins. These sol-
diers carried darts, javelins, and slings to be used before closing ranks with the enemy, although their swords
and halberds delivered crushing blows on contact. Such armed forces were active for limited periods of time
and had a predominantly defensive function, displayed in hand-to-hand combat.
Because this sporadic and untrained organization was ineffective, the ruling classes began to hire mercenar-
ies who were generously compensated for their tasks and subject to contractual terms of agreement. The
greatest idiosyncrasy of a hired military force was that the troops sometimes deserted their employers if they
could bank on a higher remuneration from the opposition. The Swiss pikemen became the best-known mer-
cenaries of the late Middle Ages. In the 1300s, they practically invented a crude body armor of leather and
quilted layered head gear with nose and skull plates, ornamented with crests. Their tower shields proved in-
dispensable against a shower of arrows, and their helmets progressed from cone cups to visors hinged at the
temples. As their notoriety increased, so did their wages, and eventually they were rounded into military
companies that later grew into the basic units in almost all armies. During the same period, the first full-size
army of professional soldiers emerged in the Ottoman Empire. What set these troops apart from other con-
temporary armies was that these soldiers remained on duty in peacetime.
Companies of mercenaries were employed on a permanent basis in 1445, when King Charles VII created a
regular military organization, complete with a designated hierarchy. Gunpowder accelerated the emergence
of military tactics and strategy that ultimately affected the conceptualization of war on a broad scale. Can-
nons further widened the gap between the attacking and the defending lineups, and undermined the exclusiv-
ity of contact battles.
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