Arctic freeze brings odd birds to Northeast Ohio

A simple explanation would be that the changes are somehow linked to global warming. Except that the eastern Arctic is currently experiencing its coldest spring in more than 50 years. The prolonged snowy conditions, with six-foot snowdrifts lingering in Churchill, Manitoba, could all but doom the breeding season for migratory birds this year, Robert Alison, a wildlife biologist, reported recently in the Winnipeg Free Press.
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[photo caption] Dunlin is one of several species of shorebirds that could experience total reproductive failure this summer due to prolonged winter conditions in the Arctic.
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"This could have a perceptible impact on what we see here in Ohio," Kenn Kaufman wrote in a post to Ohio Birds over the weekend.
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"Based on what's happening in the eastern Canadian Arctic, it's quite possible that we'll see adults of (dowitchers and yellowlegs) showing up earlier than normal as they give up on any possibility of breeding, and that numbers of juveniles will be sharply reduced from normal," Kaufman wrote.