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Spring has arrived, and the air is filled with migrating birds. Three to six million of them are headed for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the north-eastern corner of Alaska. For some of these birds, the trip totals 10,000 miles one-way.

In March, tens of thousands of American golden-plovers fly toward Louisiana and Texas on their way north from Argentina and other parts of South America. They usually arrive in the Gulf states the second week of April and are flying over Minnesota by the middle of May.

They make that incredible effort because the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge has just what they need for nesting and rearing their young. On arrival, usually just after Memorial Day, they begin pairing and nesting. By mid-June, the female will have laid four eggs in a nest scraped out of the ground by the male.

The golden-plovers like areas where the grass is low so they can spot the large insects, earthworms, and other invertebrates they eat. "Before the extirpation of the buffalo in the 1870s, enormous flocks of golden-plovers arrived in the Plains States after the great bison herds had moved northward in spring, possibly because the grazing of the bison created the cropped vegetation that makes it easier for these birds to forage for insects," says Jay Sheppard, a retired senior biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now consulting with The Wilderness Society. "One theory is that the golden-plovers are receiving that same benefit today from the caribou on their nesting grounds."