Commentary: Birds and humans can't resist Zugunruhe — the urge to be gone

In Alaska, spring comes in stages. The days grow longer, the sun finally rises before my late morning coffee break, and the darkness no longer feels eternal. I smell dirt for the first time in months as snow begins to peel back from the earth. The gulls arrive first, their stark white forms against the still-gray landscape impossible to ignore. What, at a glance, look like