YUBA CITY, Calif. — For the swirling flock of migrating shorebirds banking to a landing in California’s Central Valley, a recently flooded rice field is providing a new kind of triage station during a drought that’s drastically reducing places where they can rest on their long journeys. The new arrivals to the field – hundreds of them – are dowichers, says conservationist Greg Gulot, standing on a dirt berm and focusing his binoculars to identify a wading bird that is one of the first to fly south in an annual migration that brings 350 species to California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. With millions of birds on their way from the Arctic and...
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