Background
Conover was born in Chicago, the son of Charles Hopkins Conover and his wife Delia Louise Boardman.
Conover was born in Chicago, the son of Charles Hopkins Conover and his wife Delia Louise Boardman.
He studied at the Sheffield Scientific School in Yale.
He had an interest in natural history from an early age, and collected bird specimens. In 1920, he traveled to Venezuela with Wilfred Hudson Osgood on a collecting trip for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. They returned to South America in 1922, visiting Chile and Argentina.
In 1926, Conover traveled to East Africa.
Conover donated his collection of specimens, mostly game birds, to the Field Museum. He made a large number of contributions to Carl Edward Hellmayr"s The Catalogue of Birds of the Americas.
He died, unmarried, in Chicago, of cardiac failure, and was buried in Graceland Cemetery.
Conover was a member of the advisory council of Peabody Museum of Natural History, a trustee of the Chicago Zoological Society, and a fellow of the American Ornithologists Union.