Motherboard: On a wet, cool day this past July, while mosquitoes swarmed his hands and face, field technician Kenneth Mills squatted on the gravel shore of Hudson Bay. He patiently closed a plastic band around the leg of a young shorebird--a semipalmated plover--while a research partner armed with a rifle and binoculars stood on lookout for polar bears.
The pair banded 67 birds over 68 days, a small but essential part of data collection thats been conducted annually near Churchill, Manitoba, since 1992--one...