There may still be ice in the rivers and snow on the ground, but spring is in the air—and that means migrating shorebirds are, too. Millions of feathered travelers cross whole hemispheres in their annual trek northward to find a place to nest and raise chicks. One notable destination is Alaska’s own Cook Inlet, but there’s not enough scientific data to know just how important a role it plays for breeding shorebirds. That’s set to change this spring.
Many shorebirds pause in Cook Inlet only long enough to refuel. They gorge on the banquet of invertebrates and other organisms laid out in our vast intertidal mudflats, then set off deeper north or west into Alaska. But for thousands of individuals from at least 10 different species, Cook Inlet is home. Many of these birds may have hatched from eggs laid right here, in the boreal bogs and salt marshes that ring the coastline. Now, after a long winter and an even longer migration, they’re back to try to raise their own chicks.
One of these species, the Hudsonian Godwit, has been the focus of a research project around the mouth of the Beluga River since 2009. The godwit population has been dwindling for the past decade, and bog habitats have begun to dry out. To help understand these changes, the research project’s scope is expanding this year. It will incorporate three additional shorebird species, and measure how the success—and failure—of the birds’ breeding efforts is linked to water levels and other habitat characteristics. The new research will also extend beyond Beluga to identify and analyze other breeding areas scattered throughout the region.
Headed by West Anchorage High School graduate Nathan Senner, now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the research team works in partnership with Birds ’n’ Bogs, a citizen-science initiative powered by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. They also collaborate with Audubon Alaska and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The project uses a mix of tools. Some are high tech, like a state-of-the-art tracking system that automatically logs the locations of newly hatched shorebird chicks. Still essential, too, are good old-fashioned field methods—like surveying birds by sight and sound, and searching for extremely well-camouflaged nests while slogging through knee-high water.
Perhaps most importantly, the project will assess shorebird breeding habitat and population trends across the entire Upper Cook Inlet region. The research team will use their on-the-ground observations to calibrate drone and satellite imagery from wetlands around the inlet. Then they will combine their findings with historical records from the past four decades. With this strategy, Senner’s team can identify which areas are most important to breeding shorebirds, and measure how those sites have changed.
The purpose, of course, is to provide a focus for conservation efforts. Understanding which habitats and specific breeding locations our shorebirds rely on is an essential step toward conserving their populations. And while the salt marshes and bogs of Cook Inlet are home to an entire beautifully complex array of living organisms, having breeding shorebirds is something special—it doesn’t happen just anywhere.
A boreal bog may not be everyone’s cup of tea; after all, it’s full of mud, deep water, and the threat of late-spring mosquitoes. But it is also a remarkable haven of life. Tiny carnivorous plants, flower species that grow only in bogs, treasure troves of buried insect larvae. The bog ecosystem supports biodiversity that goes all the way up to scrubby spruce trees, with shorebirds such as lesser yellowlegs and Hudsonian Godwits perched like lookouts.
These days, that’s more and more rare. Shorebird species around the world are declining at alarming rates. One reason is these birds rely on specialized breeding habitats that are deteriorating and disappearing due to pressures like coastal development and climate change. And like all migratory animals, their pattern of life has a wide array of vulnerabilities; a single shorebird population can be hit hard by problems like habitat loss and food web disruption at a whole swathe of different locations across the globe.
‘Everything is connected’ is a familiar mantra in conversations about the natural world. It’s true, but it can be hard to visualize. Often the connections are invisible, or seem too numerous and complicated to figure out. This spring’s research will help sort out Cook Inlet’s threads in the global tapestry of shorebird migration. Meanwhile, as tens of thousands fly in from southern climes, the shorebirds themselves are living, feathered proof of the natural world’s connecting links.
