Each year shorebirds from North and South America migrate
thousands of miles to spend the summer in the Arctic. There they
feed in shoreline marshes and estuaries along some of the most
productive and pristine coasts anywhere. With so much available
food they are able to reproduce almost explosively; and as
winter approaches, they retreat south along with their
offspring, to return to the Arctic the following spring. This
remarkable pattern of movement and activity has been the object
of intensive study by an international team of ornithologists
who have spent a decade counting, surveying, and observing these
shorebirds. In this important synthetic work, they address
multiple questions about these migratory bird populations. How
many birds occupy Arctic ecosystems each summer? How long do
visiting shorebirds linger before heading south? How fecund are
these birds? Where exactly do they migrate and where exactly do
they return? Are their populations growing or shrinking? The
results of this study are crucial f