The upland plover fits easily into the agricultural countryside.  He follows the black-and-white buffalo, which now pasture his prairies, and finds them an acceptable substitute for brown ones. He nests in hay-fields as well as pastures, but, unlike the clumsy pheasant, does not get caught in hay mowers. Well before the hay is ready to cut, the young plovers are a-wing and away.  In farm country, the plover has only two real enemies: the gully and the drainage ditch.  Perhaps we shall one day find that these are our enemies, too.

There was a time in the early 1900’s when Wisconsin farms nearly lost their immemorial timepiece, when May pastures greened in silence, and August night brought no whistled reminder of impending fall.  Universal gunpowder, plus the lure of plover-on-toast for post-Victorian banquets, had taken too great a toll.  The belated protection of the federal migratory bird laws came just in time.

Excerpts are from “A Sand County Almanac, with essays on conservation from Round River”, by Aldo Leopold and published by Oxford University Press (1966). For more information about Aldo Leopold, see www.aldoleopold.org. An inexpensive paperback version of Sand County Almanac published by Ballantine Books is widely available at book stores or on-line.