This is Bird Note.

We're approaching the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

In the northern reaches of Canada and Alaska,

June days offer breeding birds almost continuous daylight.

Here's one shore bird that breeds in the Arctic, the black-bellied plover.

As you listen, imagine a bird with a dramatic black face, neck, and belly,

a stark white head, and a speckled back.

In late April and early May, black-bellied plovers make their way north along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Many settle into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to nest on the tundra.

Here, a male circles overhead while giving its flight song.

The plovers complete their breeding cycle in a month and a half.

The parents build open nests on the ground where they lay and incubate four eggs.

As soon as the young hatch, alert and covered with down,

they follow their parents and begin foraging for insects on the tundra's low vegetation.

Shortly after the summer solstice, the adult blackbellied plovers begin their southbound migration

without their young. The juveniles won't follow for another month. And yet somehow, they know

the route, even though they have never flown it before.

Learn more about black-bellied plovers

and other birds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

at birdnote.org.

I'm Mary McCann.