In this most recent field season in the Arctic, we encountered birds that reminded us that birds from all over the world depend on the Arctic habitat. When my colleague Joe Liebezeit and I landed by bush plane in a very remote region of the Arctic, we saw a bar-tailed godwit (a shorebird) with color flagging on its legs. Color bands are attached to migratory shorebirds, and the pattern of the colors reflects the site where the bird was caught and flagged. Later, when we returned to Portland, Oregon, we contacted our scientist colleagues and learned that that same godwit had been captured in southern Australia in the past few years. We also saw color-banded shorebirds that we had captured in Prudhoe Bay three years ago. That means that some of the banded shorebirds we saw had been back and forth to Asia six times or to South America six times, since we banded them. This proves that the Arctic is a nursery for birds from all over the globe!

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