And the dunlins, they'll particularly eat the pink clams. A lot of the other species are eating the marine worms, the polychaetes, clams, all sorts of things out there. Making the journey north requires careful timing. If they leave too late their chicks may not be old enough to fly before the short Arctic summer ends. Poppi Benson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says shorebirds have a plan.
Some birds are in a hurry to get to the Arctic.
The Pacific golden plover can make the 3,500-mile journey from Hawaii in just four days. Biologists once thought such a trek required huge amounts of energy. Not so, says Mary Anne Bishop. Well, what we're beginning to find is really for a lot of these birds, for what they weigh when they get to places like the Copper, they aren't burning all that fat up. What we think is happening is that they're catching good tailwinds.