forest and 
S T REA M 
463 
The Glorious Upland Plover and Upland Shooting 
It i. the Cream of All Sports, But The Author Himself Confesses That Duck Shooting is Net An Inferior Sport 
By Sandy Griswold. 
OW many sportsmen are there, 
and real enthusiastic sports¬ 
men, at that, do you think there 
are, who could give you the cor¬ 
rect significance of the term 
“upland shooting?” The fact 
is, I don’t believe there is more 
than one in every one thousand, 
who can give the correct definition of just what 
upland shooting is and is not. 
And while in this upland business, let me add, 
it is a puzzle to many why the Bartramian sand¬ 
piper is called an upland plover, instead of a 
lowland plover, where it frequents just as nu¬ 
merously as it does on the highlands. In ex¬ 
plaining these problems let me take the last first 
by announcing that the bird we know here as 
the upland plover is not a plover at all, but a 
sandpiper, the Bartramian. The name plover has 
been given it, not only in this section of the 
country, but in other localities, as an easy way of 
distinguishing it from its long-legged confreres, 
and on account of its similarity to the real plover 
genus. Unlike the plover, however, it is truly a 
bird of the uplands, and on account of this strik¬ 
ing characteristic, it has been given the prefix 
“upland” to the name “plover.” There is no 
season in the whole twelve-month when this royal 
little game bird is found with any degree of cer¬ 
tainty near water or on low, damp, boggy ground. 
While the killdeer is frequently seen where the 
upland plover is found, and will feed with it on 
our broad hay fields and plowed grounds of late 
summer, the plover is never found in the kill¬ 
deer s favorite resorts along the muddy margins 
of ponds and lakes and streams. It is sometimes 
found in the vicinity of these places, but never 
right at them, although it has even longer legs 
than the killdeer, and just as long as the yellow- 
leg, it never ventures to wade in the shallow 
waters, and feed entirely upon the coleopterous 
insects of the newly upturned wheat fields, grass¬ 
hoppers on the haying lands, crickets, beetles, 
worms and larvse, wherever it can find them. 
The upland plover is very abundant through¬ 
out all the plains country of Nebraska, and used 
to, before the national migratory bird law went 
into effect, afford the grandest sport of all our 
visiting game birds at a season when all others, 
save the dove, are exempt from the gun. 
And it is on account of this relegating the 
plover to the category of autumn birds, that I 
have had frequent occasion to criticise this law. 
No upland plover are seen in this locality until 
after the tenth of July, or later than September 
fifth, and yet the National law makes our open 
season on this grand little game bird beginning 
beptember first, when the birds have all left the 
country and gone on to the plains and plateaus 
of southern New Mexico and Texas. While the 
birds are here from July tenth to the last week 
of August, and full grown, perfectly able to take 
care of themselves, as well as in prime condi¬ 
tion, we are denied the pleasure of going out 
after them. And yet, as unaccountable as it will 
probably strike those interested, we are allowed 
to shoot turtle dove from July fifteenth to Aug¬ 
ust thirtieth, as one of the fathers of the law 
wrote me, they are not included in the law as 
they are non-migratory birds. If the dove is 
not a pronounced member of the migratoria, 
neither is the tanager, the oriole, the bluebird 
or the robin. The real fact is, we should be 
given our upland plover shooting when the birds 
are here, or not at all; as the law now stands 
it is a joke in this one particular, as you will 
certainly acknowledge. But we’ll let that pass. 
The upland plover come up from their winter 
home on the broad plateaus of Texas and Mex¬ 
ico during the latter part of March; linger here 
a day or so for rest, then continue on to the 
breeding grounds farther north. Some go as 
far north as the valley of the Saskatchewan, but 
the bulk of them breed in the Dakotas, and not 
a few in the northern part of Nebraska. While 
shooting up at Pender, one July, several years 
ago, I ran across a brood of young uplands, lit¬ 
tle comical, yellowish, downy balls, but with a 
speed of foot that was something remarkable. 
The season of nidification is comparatively short, 
and by the time the golden-rod is pluming our 
broad prairies with its topaz shafts, along about 
July io, they return to this latitude and linger 
here until the arrival of the first tinges of frost, 
when they again mount the nocturnal air and 
move on to southern climes for their winter so¬ 
journ. From the middle of July to the last of 
August should still be the proper shooting sea¬ 
son on uplands for Omaha sportsmen, as it al¬ 
ways has been, for there is no season of the 
year fuller of charms than this. 
The upland is, indeed, a royal bird, and as a 
tid-bit for the gastronome has but few equals. 
Some fancy him more than they do the delicious 
jacksnipe, and others rate him even above the 
quail. . They abound here in great numbers dur¬ 
ing this brief midsummer stay, our broad hay 
fields, reaches of plowed ground and sunny 
sloping hillsides being a favored abode. They 
are extremely shy, and are found scatteringly 
together over the same feeding grounds, and 
when flushed never fly off in a bunch, but each 
bird takes his individual course such as killdeer, 
phallaropes, English snipe and yellowlegs. 
Witn the close of the upland plover shooting, 
the gunning for the summer months used to end, 
but now we have the doves, but doves, only 
through this period. When the delicate purple 
of the meadow beauty and the soft azure of the 
lobelia show their sweet faces beneath a clear 
sun-lit sky, you need no longer listen for that 
The Woodcock—An Upland Bird that, Ala*, I. Becoming Too Rare in This Country. 
