When I lived in Honolulu, every mid-April I told my plover that he was an idiot. Why should he fly, nonstop, 4,000 to 5,000 miles simply for sex. "Stay here," I'd tell him. "There are great chicks in Honolulu. Maybe I can fix you up with that nice Hawaiian stilt I know." But my plover rejected all blandishments. In his elegant courting plumage of jet black bib and white shawl, he would, on a late-spring morning, leave his feeding territory—that small patch of grass fronting my condominium's tennis court—and wing his way north to Alaska or Siberia. In September, Deo volante, he'd be back bug picking on the Hawaiian turf.
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