The Upland Plover 
15 
The downy young are hatched in June, and take to their legs at 
once, running quickly about, tender and timid. Curious, unbalanced, 
fluffy little things they are, with legs disproportionately large and long, 
like those of a little calf, or of a fawn or a colt. Throughout the early 
summer they dwell in the grass-land in security, feeding largely on insects 
and wild strawberries. Their anxious parents lead them .about and 
sound the alarm at the approach of an enemy, when the little ones scatter, 
squat and hide. In July, when the hay is cut, they 
are well able to look out for themselves, although they Care of 
have not yet learned fully to fear the sportsman. 
Long years ago, when August came it brought a .great , gathering 
of the Upland Plover clan. The young birds were then strong on the 
wing, and all the hill-pastures knew them well in grasshopper time. 
As the spring tide of birds flowed northward, so the fall . tide ebbed 
southward, but there was a difference in the route. The spring migration 
appeared to come up through the interior of South America, . crossing 
the Gulf of Mexico, landing in Louisiana and Texas, and diverging 
thence over the whole- country ; but in autumn the trend of the eastern 
flight seems to have been southeast to the Atlantic Coast, where the 
birds put out to sea and crossed the great spaces of ocean without . chart 
or compass. Some individuals still take the western route through 
Mexico, and all spend the winter in South America. 
In feeding, the Plover, even when in the greatest ^Diet^ 
numbers, appears to have been entirely harmless and 
beneficial. In spring the insect-diet was varied somewhat by a few -nips 
at tender, budding vegetation. A good deal of waste grain was, picked 
up in the stubble of wheat and rye in the fall, and quantities of grass- 
seeds and weed-seeds, and some wild berries, were eaten. Thelbird is 
a gourmand for grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. Professor Aughey, 
who studied the habits of the species in Nebraska for several years 
previous to 1877, found that they fed on insects during all the time 
they stayed in that State. 
Waldo L. McAtee, of the Biological Survey, shows, as a- result of 
many examinations of the contents of stomachs, that the Upland Plover 
is a friend to cattle, because it devours the North American fever tick, 
which carries a deadly fever from one animal to another. He says that 
it destroys crane-fly larvae also, which often are seriously destructive to 
grass-lands and wheatfields ; cutworms, which are Noxious 
detrimental to many crops ; the boll-weevil, which Insects 
now menaces the cotton-crop of the South ; the clover- Eaten 
leaf weevil, the cow-pea weevil, and other weevils that attack cotton, 
grapes, and sugar-beets. Bill-bugs, destructive to corn, are a favorite 
food of this bird, and wire-worms, which destroy many garden-crops, 
are eaten. Crayfishes, which are pests in ricefields arid ^cornfields in 
the South, and which injure levees, are constantly caught and devoured. 
On the prairies these Plovers feed largely on snails, beetles, and grass- 
eating insects. Why, then, have the people of the ' United States 
