Some of you may have heard on the news that something called the Arctic Council met recently in Portland. Yes, we know it is sometimes pretty cold here in Maine but no one has ever suggested that we are part of the Arctic! Apparently the Council met in Portland because Maine is potentially a sort of U.S. maritime gateway to the eastern Arctic regions where shipping may increase as global warming opens previously iced-in ocean routes.

Maine has some historical connections with the Arctic, notably through Admiral Peary and Donald MacMillan whose Arctic explorations and artifacts are described and housed at the Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum on the Bowdoin College campus.

Birds, too, make the connection between Maine and the Arctic very real.

Many of the shorebirds that we see feeding along our beaches, mudflats, salt marshes, and rocky shores each fall and spring are species that breed in the Arctic. Birds like semipalmated and white-rumped sandpipers, sanderling, dunlin, ruddy turnstones, black-belled plovers, and many other familiar birds here in Maine rely on safe and healthy Arctic regions to lay their eggs and raise their young.

We have written here before about the amazing journey of the whimbrel, a chicken-sized shorebird with a long, down-curved beak. These birds breed in parts of the Arctic, and females have been satellite tagged and tracked from the Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories to staging locations in Maine and the Maritimes.

The purple sandpipers that survive on cold, wave-dashed rocky peninsulas and islands in the middle of our Maine winters nest in the eastern High Arctic.

Some of our most beloved winter waterfowl are reliant on Arctic regions as their nesting area. The long-tailed duck, for example, whose yodeling cries can be heard echoing over our bays and coves as late winter edges closer to spring. It nests all across the Arctic but migrates down in flocks to spend the winter in the ocean waters along the Maine coast. The garishly beautiful harlequin duck, the males with their slate blue bodies marked with white and red, are a favorite of birders, not only here in Maine but from across the U.S.—many birders travel here to see them. Harlequin ducks nest in the low Arctic and Boreal regions. Some of them have been tracked moving back and forth between Canada, Greenland, and then down here to Maine to spend the winter. The goose with the black head and neck known as the brant, small flocks of which sometimes winter in scattered locations along the Maine coast, nest in the very highest part of the Arctic.

Many birders enjoy seeing mighty peregrine falcons zipping south along the Maine coast and islands in the fall—places like Monhegan have great showings of the species—and most of these birds were hatched on cliffs across the Arctic where they may have gazed out over a landscape populated with creatures like polar bears and musk ox!

There are many reasons why it makes sense for the Arctic Council to meet in Maine. Watching out for our shared birds is one of them that we hope they are paying attention to!

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the book, “Maine’s Favorite Birds.”