Stanley Senner’s love of shorebirds began at Cheyenne Bottoms Refuge in Great Bend, Kansas. As a college student, he spent his summers working closely with (and mesmerized by) Stilt Sandpipers, Lesser Yellowlegs, and American Avocets. Looking over his more than 40-year career in conservation, Senner credits those moments at Cheyenne Bottoms—and Peter Matthiessen’s nature-writing classic The Wind Birds: Shorebirds of North America—as the reasons shorebirds are an important theme for his work. Last month, during the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Group’s biennial meeting in Panama City, Panama, Senner received the Allan Baker Lifetime Achievement Award for Shorebird Conservation. Named after the late Professor Allan J. Baker, one of the world’s leading researchers in shorebird conservation and genetics, the honor is given to an individual who has made similarly impactful contributions to preserve migratory shorebirds and the places they need. During his career, Senner...