248 



BIRDS OF AMERICA 



above, blackish-brown ; below, grayish-white. Rill, 

 shorter titan head: iiapc. uudr: neck, long: tail, long 

 and graduated: outer and middle toes webbed at base; 

 inner toe free. Found maiidy in pastures and old fields 

 away from water, even at the sea-shore. 



Color. — Above, blackish-brown, all feathers edged 

 with tawny or whitish, the brown prevailing on crown 

 and back, the lighter edgings of latter producing a 

 streaked effect ; on long inner secondaries, the dark 

 color mere small bars ; wing-coverts marked with 

 whitish; primaries, dusky, outer one barred unth while: 

 rump and upper tail-coverts, plain brownish-black ; 

 middle tail-feathers, dark brown with rufous edges and 

 irregularly barred ; rest of tail-feathers, orange-brown 

 with numerous broken bars or spots of black and a sub- 

 terminal black bar ; line over eye and under parts, 

 grayish-white, tinged with yellowish-brown on breast 



and sides of head; breast and sides, with each feather 

 marked by a brownish arrowhead-shaped spot ; bill, 

 yellowish-green, dusky at tip; legs, yellowish-olive; 

 iris, brown. 



Nest and Eggs. — Nest: A slight depression in open 

 dry prairies, lined or not with grass. Encs : 4, pale 

 huffy or cream, spotted with dark brown and lav- 

 ender. 



Distribution. — North and South America ; breeds 

 from northwestern ."Alaska, southern Mackenzie, cen- 

 tral Keewatin, central Wisconsin, southern Michigan, 

 southern Ontario, and southern Maine to southern 

 Oregon, northern Utah, central Oklahoma, southern 

 Missouri, southern Indiana, and northern Virginia; 

 winters on the pampas of South America to Argentina; 

 in migration occurs north to Newfoundland and in 

 Europe ; accidental in Australia. 



My early recollections of the Upland Plover, 

 once a familiar ganie bird, are of open rolling 

 grassy tracts on Cape Cod, Mass., interspersed 

 with patches of bayberry bushes, in late July 

 and August, and some very shy brown birds 

 that, despite most of iny attempts to stalk them, 

 would rise wildly well out of gunshot and with 

 shrill cries fly on to the next hillside, alighting 

 and watching in an erect attitude, their heads 

 projecting from the short sparse grass. 



Upland Plover shooting is now becoming a 

 thing of the past, under the protection of Fed- 

 eral Law. This is as it should be, for here we 

 have another species which is in great danger 

 of extermination. Little by little, both through 

 excessive shooting and by the destruction of 

 nests in cultivated areas, it has been growing 

 more and more scarce. Once it was a common 

 bird in the Eastern States, but now only an occa- 

 sional lone pair is found there. The grassy 

 prairies of the Northwest are now its principal 

 breeding ground, but owing to their increased 

 reclamation for agricultural purposes, it is being 

 further pushed out. This is a lamentable declen- 

 sion from the days when in New England it was 

 comparable in abundance to the Meadowlark, 

 and pairs were nesting in nearly every field. 



Classing it as a " shore bird," is only on the 

 basis of structure and relationship, for other- 

 wise there is no bird which is less fond of the 

 vicinity of water. Its haunts are dry grassy 

 fields, where it lives chiefly on insects injurious 

 to the fields, such as cutworms and grasshoppers. 

 Here is where it nests, the last of May and early 

 June. The female sits closely, and on the prai- 

 ries of North Dakota, Manitoba, and Saskatche- 

 wan I have found nests only by flushing the 

 brooding bird, which allows one almost to step 

 upon her before she will leave. The nest is in 

 rather thick bunches of prairie grass, a simple 



affair of dry grass leaves. Four is the invariable 

 number of eggs which I have found. The bird 

 is almost exactly the color of dead grass, and 

 even when the nest has been found and revisited, 

 it is astonishing how hard it is to discern the 

 brooding bird. In one case she allowed me to 

 open by hand the grass which covered her, set 

 up the camera and photograph her within two 

 feet of the lens. Shy as the birds become under 

 persecution, they are gentle in nesting time. On 

 the western prairies they are much less shy than 

 in the East. 



As soon as the young are able to fly, in July, 

 they all begin to migrate south, and most of them 

 are gone before August is far advanced. This 

 was the reason why the older laws allowed Up- 

 land Plover shooting in July. In the sumiuer 

 of 191 2 I was in Manitoba. At the opening of 

 this early hunting season, a gunner came out 

 near our camp and shot nearly forty LTpland 

 Plovers, while his boy picked up little downy 

 chicks and carried them in his pocket. I reported 

 this to the head authorities, who are excellent 

 conservationists, and the law was changed. It 

 will need the best of care, by every State and 

 Province, and the cooperation of public senti- 

 ment, to save from extinction this beautiful and 

 valuable species. Herbert K. Job. 



The investigations of the Government biolo- 

 gist show that the Upland Plover is naturally 

 an industrious destroyer of many different spe- 

 cies of noxious insects. There can be no doubt 

 that the bird feeds upon the highly destructive 

 locust, and also upon grasshoppers, the clover- 

 root curculio. bill-bugs (which destroy much 

 corn), crawfish, which are a pest in corn and 

 rice fields and also weaken levees by their bur- 

 rowing, and various grubs which damage garden 

 truck, corn, and cotton crops. 



