Foreword: My fascination with Wisconsin's breeding birds dates back seventy years to 1934, when I spent the summer on a Dane County farm with my Wisconsin cousins.

Preface: Collecting information on birds began in Wisconsin before it became a state, and publishing the data came soon thereafter when I.A. Lapham (1852a, b) produced 'A Systematic Catalogue of the Animals of Wisconsin' and also 'Fauna and Flora of Wisconsin'/ P.R. Hoy (1853) dded his 'Notes on the Ornithology of Wisconsin' the following year.

Introduction: Planning for the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas began in 1994 when about 15 individuals started to discuss the possibility of conducting a large, state-wide, multi-year project that would provide a premanent record of all the species breeding in the state at the end of the twentieth century.