Nevadans have long claimed that there is more to their state than a bunch of sagebrush and dirt. And Nevada birders are the same, emphasizing riparian zones filled with warblers and buntings, desert lakes covered with pelicans and grebes, wetlands loaded with avocets and stilts, and montane forests with their woodpeckers, tanagers, and grosbeaks. But, as Ray Nelson’s cover painting for Important Bird Areas of Nevada suggests, what is really important is perhaps all those areas in between—the gray-brown land filled with gray-brown birds: the Ferruginous Hawk, Prairie Falcon, Greater Sage-Grouse, Burrowing Owl, Sage Sparrow, and Sage Thrasher stare out from the cover like a bunch of mobsters on the Las Vegas strip and are deadly serious about the message they intend to send.