16 
The Upland Plover 
allowed the destruction of this beautiful, interesting and useful bird? 
When the white man came to this country the Upland Plover must 
have been a rare bird east of the prairies in the nesting season, as it 
normally lives on open lands, and the Atlantic seaboard was then a 
wooded region ; but, as the country was cleared, and fields and pastures 
took the place of the wilderness of forests, the bird must have increased 
tremendously in numbers until it bred commonly in 
Explained sett ^ e( l regions of the Northeast. The advance 
of population and of market-hunting, however, put 
a stop to its increase, and then its decrease began. 
Although for years laws protecting the Upland Plover had been 
enacted in several States, these statutes rarely were enforced, and the 
birds were shot for the market in spring and throughout the breeding- 
season. About the year 1880, when approaching extinction caused the 
spring supply of Passenger Pigeons in market to fail, the market-men 
looked about for birds to take the vacant place, and found, among others, 
the Upland Plover, which moved north through the interior of the 
United States, and offered them a large supply of dainty bird-flesh. 
There were tales of organized hunting, of cars loaded with various 
plovers, of the raiding of State after State by thousands of hunters in 
the interest of the great markets. Probably these stories were exag- 
gerated, but we know that barrels of plovers began to come into the 
larger cities of the country in dozens and hundreds. A few years later 
the Upland Plover was seen to be rapidly disappearing; and by 1910 
the bird was rare or wanting over nearly all the great region where once 
it was so plentiful. 
The threatened extermination was checked by the adoption and en- 
forcement of the Audubon Model Law in various Western and Middle 
States ; and more lately by the passage of Federal laws, especially the 
Migratory-Bird Law, enacted under the guidance of 
Protection Senator George P. McLean, of Connecticut, in 1913. 
Canada, also, has extended more efficient protection 
than formerly to this and related birds of her prairie provinces in the 
Northwest. It may be hoped, therefore, that a few years hence this 
beautiful, useful, and friendly bird may become again a numerous and 
welcome visitor to the prairies and farmsteads of our land, as it will 
do if not mercilessly shot and robbed of its eggs. 
Classification and Distribution 
The Upland Plover belongs to the order Limicolce and the Family Scolopacidce. 
Its scientific name is Bartramia longicauda . It breeds locally as far north as 
the upper Yukon and North-Saskatchewan valleys, Manitoba, southern Ontario, 
and Maine ; as far south as the Potomac and Ohio valleys, and Oklahoma ; and 
westward to the base of the Sierra Nevada. Its winters are spent on the pampas 
of Argentina, its migrations thus carrying it, as a species, nearly the whole length 
of the two Americas. 
This and other Educational Leaflets are for sale, at 5 cents each, by the National Association of 
Audubon Societies, 1974 Broadway, New York City. Lists given on request. 
