14 
The Upland Plover 
farms throughout the greater part of the land during the breeding-season. 
It was a bird of good omen, harmless and useful, and, as Abbott Thayer 
says, it filled a place on American farms similar to that taken by the 
Lapwing in Europe. We must speak here in the past tense, because, 
unfortunately, the bird to-day is far on the road to extinction. Never- 
theless, the pitiful remnants of its thinning ranks still wander over most 
of North and South America. 
Most of the cries of the Upland Plover are unique. A common 
call-note may be represented by the words quitty-quit, uttered in a soft, 
sweet tone. Late in May a long, bubbling whistle may be heard, some- 
times weird and mournful, though always mellow. 
Professor Lynds Jones, who furnishes the best de- 
Voice scription of its voice that I have seen, says that its 
common rolling call is not unlike the cry of a “tree- 
toad,” hut of a different and unmistakable quality and caliber. 
The note, he remarks, is commonly double, the first part rising 
upward nearly half an octave and terminating abruptly, the second part 
beginning where the first began, swelling rapidly for almost, if not quite, 
an octave, and then decreasing in volume to a close several tones higher 
than its beginning. The long whistling cry is usually trilled at the begin- 
ning, and sometimes to the end, but oftener it grows clear before the 
culmination and continues a clear whistle to the finish. Sometimes the 
whistled part is not reached and the call stops as if interrupted. Often, 
upon alighting, the bird holds its wings straight upward, folding them 
slowly down as it utters its long, mellow call. As the breeding-season 
passes, gome of the notes change, and in autumn, when it comes in and 
alights on a hill-pasture to feed, it emits a chuckling call, an imitation 
of which is used by gunners to attract the birds. Ordinarily most 
of its notes are given in flight. When alarmed it has a peculiar sharp 
call, much like that of some others of its family. 
The Upland Plover formerly summered in the northern parts of the 
United States and built its nest in every suitable grassy spot from the 
Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. The eggs, usually four, large 
for the bird (i inch in diameter to 1.75 inches, or 
more, in length), are pale gray, spotted with umber, 
yellowish brown, reddish brown, and black, becoming 
blotchy toward the larger end. 
The nest is merely a slight grass-lined depression at the foot of 
a small bush on a hill-pasture or a prairie, or in a hollow in plowed land, 
and usually is well concealed. In the West, it is often situated on 
the edge of the woods or close to some slough or pool, sometimes on a 
dry spot in a marsh. As the prairies came under the plow the Plover 
often chooses as her nesting-site a hill of corn. The female sits so closely 
sometimes as to be almost trodden underfoot, while the male tries to 
entice the intruder away. When warned in advance of her danger, the 
female often leaves the nest and steals away through the grass for thirty 
or forty yards before taking wing. 
Nest and 
Eggs 
