- 2 days ago
Shorebirds fly thousands of miles each year along ancient and largely unknown migratory routes called Flyways....
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00:06I love Easton Curleys. They're majestic, they're stately, they are powerful flyers,
00:13they have a purpose. The way a group of Godwits looks when it takes to the air,
00:19the way they move together, move with the wind, give this embodied shape to the wind,
00:26it is remarkable. Shorebirds are Earth's most global citizens, crossing from one end of the world to
00:34the other each year. Yet below them, once familiar landscapes are giving way to development, drought
00:42and rising seas. Scientists are doing their best to map their epic journeys and the dangers they face
00:51as they follow the flights of these heroic birds. I hope I might even catch up with her
00:58in a couple of weeks in a very different part of the world. We just wish her the best.
01:04She's got a really long way to go.
01:38I'm Jack Hush.
01:39I'm Jack Hush.
01:41I'm Jack Hush.
01:47I'm Jack Hush.
01:48I'm Jack Hush.
01:51You've got to be right back.
01:52On beaches and tidal mudflats all around the world, you'll see them in their thousands.
02:03Shorebirds.
02:07There are more than 200 species on the planet.
02:14Feeding on the teeming life between the tidelines.
02:27Then, from one day to the next, they'll be gone on an extraordinary journey.
02:36They're heading for their breeding grounds, up to 9,000 miles away,
02:44following ancestral flyways that wrap around the globe.
02:56Shorebirds, like this little western sandpiper, are supreme endurance athletes.
03:04They can fly for days and nights without landing.
03:10Over cities, and deserts, and trackless oceans.
03:24The goal for many, the bogs and tundra of the Arctic North.
03:32Here, in the endless summer daylight, their chicks can feed on clouds of insects.
03:41And in just a few weeks, they'll gain the weight to follow their parents south again.
03:51But the world beneath their wings is changing.
03:57Shorebirds are among the most threatened birds on the planet.
04:10We're going to fly with three of these adventurers.
04:14And share the elation and the anxiety of the men and women who track their migrations from three separate continents.
04:25From the far south of South America.
04:28From the desert beaches of West Africa.
04:33And from Australia, in a place called Morton Bay.
04:37Oh, I see that curlew up there, flying.
04:40Yeah.
04:42Around 500 square miles of mudflats and sandbanks on Australia's east coast.
04:49Every March, biologist Richard Fuller and his colleague Misha Jackson come here to watch the shorebirds fatten up for their
04:57journey north.
04:58A couple hundred birds there, I think.
05:03Richard's special interest?
05:05The largest migratory shorebird in the world.
05:09The far eastern curlew.
05:12I love eastern curlews.
05:14They're majestic.
05:15They're stately.
05:16They are powerful flyers.
05:19They have a purpose.
05:20They're on a mission.
05:24And although they're a brown bird, but the intricacy of their plumage and the patterning on them
05:29is just fascinating and beautiful.
05:35These magnificent birds fly more than 7,000 miles to their breeding grounds in North Asia and back again.
05:47Over the course of its 20-year lifespan, an eastern curlew travels the distance from the earth to the moon.
05:57To make these prodigious flights, it must have fuel.
06:02It needs to gain up to half its body weight in fat.
06:08So a curlew's diet is comprised almost completely of crustaceans, but they have a particular predilection for crabs.
06:17They love crabs.
06:21The curlew will probe into the ground, you know, often 20 centimetres down, grab a crab, and when it's successful,
06:30you see a curlew rip its bill out of the sediment, and it will be kind of manipulating the crab
06:34in its bill.
06:35Sometimes tossing it up into the air to get it in the right position, and then it goes in, in
06:40one gulp.
06:48But the curlew's feeding grounds in Moreton Bay are shrinking.
06:53Human encroachment has been going on for decades.
06:59There's every chance that eastern curlew could be extinct within a few decades, and that's a terrifying thought.
07:16On the other side of the world, where the Sahara meets the Atlantic,
07:22huge flocks of hungry birds are jostling for a spot on the beach.
07:31Busy and beak-down in the mud is our West African migrant, the Red Knot.
07:36Ah, they are so pretty.
07:40These plucky little birds must double their weight in just a few weeks to power their 6,000-mile migration
07:47from Moretania to Siberia, where they breed.
07:52But Red Knot's, too, are struggling.
07:55We had a half a million Red Knot's in the 1980s, and nowadays it's only 100,000.
08:03So a loss of 80% in just 40 years.
08:13Dutch ecologist Jan van Giels has been studying the Red Knot for 30 years.
08:20It's not just the Red Knot population that's declining.
08:24The individual birds are shrinking, too.
08:28The bill is getting shorter, the wing is getting shorter, the legs are getting shorter.
08:34And you can say, well, who cares? Smaller Red Knot's?
08:38But what is important, if you come here as a small Red Knot in Mauritania, you have a big problem.
08:49Jan and his colleagues from the University of Nuwakchok take samples of the mud the bird feeds in.
08:57Oh, yeah. Oh.
08:59What? Look at that.
09:00Wood of Red Knot.
09:01Luripas also.
09:02Luripas.
09:03Yeah, an old luripas.
09:04Yes.
09:06So this is the food that the Red Knot's really, really like.
09:12They ingest these bivalves whole, and they crush these bivalves in their stomach.
09:18So they have a very strong stomach.
09:21They need good food.
09:23They need the bivalves like this in order to make it to northern Siberia.
09:27But these birds are becoming smaller, so maybe all these bivalves are actually way too deep for the knots to
09:36reach.
09:40So what are they eating instead?
09:45The birds were roosting here this morning, and we see signs of where they were roosting.
09:51We see tracks. Here it is.
09:54The Red Knot's droppings provide the evidence.
09:57A normal knot dropping is full of fragments of shellfish.
10:03They have switched diets from their favorite bivalves to seagrass.
10:13So it's in a way a really sad story, because this shows they are fueling up for Siberia on very
10:21poor quality food.
10:39In Chiloé Island, more than halfway down the long coast of Chile, our South American voyager dances on the wind.
10:49The way a group of Godwitz looks when it takes to the air, the way they move together, move with
10:57the wind, give this embodied shape to the wind, it is remarkable.
11:06As long-distance athletes, Hudsonian Godwitz outperform almost every other shorebird.
11:14Each year they fly 9,000 miles from Chile to Alaska.
11:21Most make just one or two refueling stops, but their options are narrowing by the year.
11:31Jennifer Linscott has joined an international network of scientists studying the migration of Hudsonian Godwitz.
11:40We really don't know how many of those sites exist, and we don't know how they're changing over time.
11:47We know that it's now a landscape that's been completely re-engineered for agriculture.
11:54Godwitz, like many other migratory shorebirds, are in decline, and we think that that likely has a lot to do
11:59with what's happening during migration.
12:10The best way to get answers, the scientists all agree, is to attach GPS trackers to individual birds.
12:18Tracking goes to the heart of what conservation is.
12:22You can describe the migration of a species by mapping it, by understanding the places it visits, and crucially, by
12:31understanding what threats they're facing along the flyway.
12:38But to attach a tracker on a bird, first, you have to catch it.
12:48In Australia, in South America, and in West Africa, the nets are being set.
13:00Jan is hoping to catch some red knots as they fly in to roost at night.
13:08Oh, this is great. There's birds coming into the catching area.
13:12But Richard and his team must wait for the curlews to gather in precisely the right spot.
13:18Eastern curlews are exceptionally difficult birds to catch. They're very, very wary.
13:29Come on birds.
13:34So must Jennifer in Chile.
13:39This is a part we can't control.
13:42We just have to wait.
13:43Wait for the time to come in.
13:45Wait for the birds to move.
13:47Wait for them to move to the right spot.
13:57In Australia, the moment arrives.
14:03Everybody ready?
14:05Three, two, one, fire.
14:15But for Team Curlew, it's a miss.
14:26Will Team Godwet in Chile have better luck?
14:33Three, two, one, fire.
14:42Three, two, one, fire.
14:48Maybe we'll see a little stressed.
14:52But it's to hurry and get the birds to arrive soon.
14:57Two.
14:58We got about 30 birds.
15:16Jan and his team have also netted some red knots.
15:23So, it seems we have 13 red knots.
15:29So, that's really awesome.
15:38In Mauritania, and in Chile, the satellite trackers are fitted.
15:56Despite months of trying, Richard and his team in Moreton Bay have failed to catch a single curlew.
16:09But there is one bird that they tagged back in 2017 that is still transmitting her location.
16:19Her name is A.A.D.
16:22She's a tough, successful traveler.
16:26Richard has already tracked her twice.
16:28All the way to Northern China and back here to Moreton Bay.
16:33I have a high sense of anticipation right now, an excited expectation.
16:39But I'm also apprehensive, I think, and deeply concerned.
16:44Will she find what she needs along her migration journey?
16:51As March draws the curtain on the southern summer,
16:55shorebirds start to stir with yearning for the north.
17:00The scientists call it migratory restlessness.
17:10You can see them getting excited, calling to each other, maybe taking short flights.
17:19But then, eventually, a group will decide this is the moment.
17:24A.A.D. spreads her wings.
17:29The first bird of the expedition, in the air.
17:39And in Chile, Jennifer and the team send the Godwits on their way.
17:46I hope, you know, I'll be in the same area where she's likely to stop along the way.
17:52So, there's a chance I might even catch up with her in a couple of weeks,
17:57in a very different part of the world.
18:01You should wish her the best.
18:04She's got a really long way to go.
18:24Thousands of miles of ocean lie between the shorebirds and their first hope of rest.
18:32A migrating shorebird may not need sleep.
18:36It rests half its brain, while the other half remains alert.
18:47It's thought that pigments in its eyes let it perceive the Earth's magnetic field and stay on course.
18:57At night, it can navigate by the stars.
19:06The Godwits fly over 5,000 miles of open ocean.
19:11They can't glide or swim, so must beat their wings continuously.
19:19Crossing over Central America and the Gulf of Mexico.
19:26After six days and nights without food, water or rest, they reach the coast of Texas.
19:34But the land below is in severe drought.
19:40Tracking shows the birds are slowing down and making turns.
19:45Searching perhaps for a refuge that isn't there.
19:50And so, they press on.
19:56Shorebirds burn fat for water as well as energy.
20:01They can even digest parts of their own organs to stay hydrated.
20:07And when their bodies are pushed to their utmost limit, they burn the very muscle that beats their wings.
20:19At last, the Godwits find a place to rest and feed in South Dakota.
20:26South Dakota is filled with wetlands.
20:29They're just divots in the landscapes that were carved out by the movement of a glacier.
20:35And now they fill with snow melt and rainwater every spring.
20:48As soon as summer rolls in and the temperatures climb, that water is going to evaporate.
20:52But for now, it's perfect.
20:58It's exactly the kind of habitat that's going to help them find the fuel that they need to keep migrating.
21:11Every spring, Jennifer spends weeks scouring South Dakota, searching for the birds she tagged in Chile.
21:21They have been migrating through this ephemeral landscape for thousands of years.
21:26So, they're evolved for that, but the rates at which things are changing are much faster than they've ever been.
21:33We don't know if Godwits can cope with this kind of variability now in the way that they've coped with
21:39it in the past.
21:49It looks like it's right back here.
21:55Oh yeah, that's a Godwit.
21:56Godwit? Nice.
22:00It looks like there's more than one.
22:01Ooh.
22:02Wait, is that a whole group of Godwits, do you think?
22:04Yeah, I think so.
22:05Yeah?
22:06One, two, three.
22:11You can feel, in a way, just watching them, how long of a journey it's been and how hungry they
22:19are.
22:21It's incredible.
22:24You know, we spend so much time out here looking and looking and looking and then to finally see one
22:30out in the middle of a cornfield, you know, a Godwit that we might have seen in Chile not that
22:38long ago.
22:40It's a great feeling.
22:44In Western Europe, the red knots also need to refuel on their journey from West Africa to Siberia.
22:53They flock to the vast tidal mud banks that stretch along the Dutch and German coasts, the Wadden Sea.
23:12This is the westernmost part of the Wadden Sea.
23:15It's a major staging site for the birds on their way to the Arctic.
23:23Wow.
23:28They stay here for like two, three weeks in order to gain strength again to travel all the way to
23:35Siberia.
23:40Yes, we have currently two birds that we caught in Mauritania just a few weeks ago.
23:48When you see birds that you have tagged yourself and they arrive here in the Wadden Sea, oh, this is
23:54so cool.
23:56But at this moment, Jan's elation turns to bitter disappointment.
24:02We have a new problem, and it's the war in Ukraine.
24:05And we actually just heard from the ministry that we cannot go to Siberia.
24:12We are forced to ban our connections to Russian scientists right now, from this moment.
24:18And we just heard we cannot go.
24:20It's a huge frustration.
24:29These birds are going to Russia.
24:31They are crossing borders that we cannot cross this year and maybe next year, and God knows for how long.
24:45From Morton Bay, Richard watches his curlews' journey north.
24:53We've tracked AAD crossing over the Great Barrier Reef, Cape York, Papua New Guinea, still flying over some of the
25:02highest mountains in Southeast Asia.
25:05Pushing north over the Philippines, and she's touched down in Taiwan.
25:18In Taiwan, birdwatching is a national passion.
25:36We immediately notified birdwatchers in Taiwan, and the messages went out on social media.
25:43Hundreds of people began searching for AAD.
25:56It is retired vet Li Zhenfeng, who scores the jackpot.
26:07There is a bridge in the sky.
26:08Now, we have to go out and slow.
26:12You can see it on top left, and it looks like it looks like it looks like it's far from
26:13the sky.
26:14It looks like it looks like the sun is green, a blue blood.
26:15It is really a blue blood red, or a blue blood red velvet.
26:17When I'm shooting, I'm not shooting.
26:19When I'm shooting, I see how the first one I am shooting.
26:22The first one I've done with my feet.
26:24With the ear of the new ear, turning left open and turning close again,
26:30It is confirmed that he was looking for the birds all over the entire year.
26:35He was immediately in the car and in the chat.
26:39He was on the train, and he was on the train.
26:46We can track birds with satellite transmitters,
26:49but when you see one on the ground, it's really the holy grail.
26:52That's an on-ground confirmed observation of the bird
26:56that's just been a dot on a computer screen up until that point.
27:00So I'm super excited about that and excited to learn where she goes next.
27:08Where AAD goes next is northern China,
27:13where she and her forebears have been nesting for generations.
27:19But Richard fears that, year by year,
27:22her chosen breeding ground is less likely to bring her success.
27:26This region of China has undergone massive transformation.
27:32Those wonderful grassy forested mosaic wilderness swamplands
27:39have been converted into rice paddies.
27:44So now some of our curlews, they're literally using the last remaining patches of that original habitat.
27:53And we see birds making forays out into the rice paddies,
27:58perhaps forlornly looking for food.
28:00There won't be much for them, yet we see them still searching there.
28:08The birds that traditionally breed in China, I think are now under immense threat and likely to be declining really
28:15fast.
28:20Many other shorebird species nest farther north, in the marsh and tundra of the Arctic.
28:29As the snows melt and the air warms, the Godwits arrive in the boglands of Alaska's Beluga River.
28:39In their five-week journey, they've demonstrated a mastery of navigation,
28:45as well as extraordinary stamina.
28:51Astonishingly, many of them land within a hundred yards of where they were born.
28:59Jennifer's colleague Nathan Senner leads the Godwit research here in Alaska.
29:05All of Jenny's birds have made their way back to Alaska and are hopefully finding each other as quickly as
29:10they can
29:11and getting on with the breeding season because, you know, they've got only ten weeks here.
29:18What we've found is that they're remarkably able to, in some cases,
29:24lay their first egg within five days of getting here.
29:31The researchers need to know how many chicks will survive this year to fly south.
29:37So we have to find the nest and then, once the eggs hatch, put tracking devices on the chicks
29:42and follow their movements and their survival over the course of their development here in the bog.
29:51On the other side of Alaska, Jan is on the trail of a different population of red knots.
29:58The birds he tagged in Mauritania are on their way to Siberia without him.
30:08So now, he and his team are searching for nests without any tracking devices to guide them.
30:19They play red-knot calls over a speaker, hoping to attract adult birds
30:25that they can follow to their nests.
30:30But knots in the Arctic are very, very cryptic.
30:34They have feathers with the color of the lichens on the rocks here.
30:39So there are thousands of rocks and they all look like red knots.
30:52After two weeks of fruitless hunting, Jan's team tries out a new approach.
30:58A drone.
31:00With an infrared camera they hope will detect the warm-blooded red knots nesting in the frozen tundra.
31:19Oh my god.
31:24And at last, they spot one.
31:27Ah, I feel excited. I feel really excited.
31:30It heats me up in the cold.
31:40Back in Beluga, Nathan knows the Godwit's breeding area intimately.
31:46But it's no less of a wonder each time he finds a nest.
32:04You can see the bill of the chick starting to poke out.
32:07This bird is going to hatch tomorrow morning.
32:12Nathan marks the location of the nest so his team can return tomorrow.
32:18If we're not there when the chick actually hatches,
32:21we're never likely to see them because they are moving away from the nest
32:25within a couple of hours of hatching.
32:27And it's incredibly difficult to find them in the bog
32:31after they've actually left the nest.
32:37And scientists aren't the only ones searching for nests.
32:46Hidden cameras reveal a variety of predators.
33:17Uh-oh.
33:20that's not good
33:23I found an egg with some
33:25like an open egg with some blood in it
33:27that looks to me more like it was eaten
33:29than like it hatched
33:35is that another one?
33:38alright well let's leave these
33:39parents to their anguish
33:45yeah not good
33:46you're rooting for the birds
33:47that's why we're here
33:50I mean it is part of
33:52the whole process but
33:53as yeah
33:56when you've watched the nest for a long time
33:58it's not a good ending
34:06it's June in the Arctic
34:08the warm air
34:10buzzes with insects
34:15summer is here
34:17and from those hollows in the scrub
34:20emerges
34:21life
34:48then you can hear that
34:52or have to be out there
34:52because he
34:52the sea
35:06Nathan and his team have returned to one of their godwit nests, searching for newly hatched chicks.
35:30Can I hand you the first one?
35:33Gosh, they're really cute, kind of goofy.
35:40There we go, 25.
35:52Look at those floppy legs.
36:00When they come out of the egg, some parts of them are more developed than others, and so
36:06that they can run across the bog as quickly as they're out of the egg, they've got really
36:12developed legs, whereas their bill, you can see, is nothing like the adult bill yet.
36:17It's quite short because they just preen insects off the vegetation.
36:20They're not probing into anything.
36:23And then the wings, of course, they're not anywhere near being ready to fly, so those are least developed of
36:28all.
36:29And yet, those wings are going to carry the young bird 9,000 miles.
36:35The fact that this chick, in two months, is going to go from 22 grams to over 300 grams, and
36:43it's going to fly all the way to southern South America, that's a phenomenal, phenomenal growth rate.
37:00In the tundra to the north, Jan's infrared drone reveals that one of his red knot's clutches has hatched.
37:25Tarsis is 28.3.
37:40For the red knot chicks, the first few weeks of life are especially perilous.
37:51Only about a quarter of them will live long enough to make the journey south.
37:57He's coming.
37:58Here he is.
38:00There we go.
38:05Do your best, man.
38:08But Jan's main concern is that even those that survive will be smaller than they ought to be.
38:16Three weeks after the snow has melted, there's the insect peak on which the chicks can feed.
38:25With the rapid warming of the Arctic, the summer has already started.
38:30These insects are emerging earlier from the soil.
38:34But what the birds do not do, is adjust their travel schedule.
38:40So nowadays, these birds in the Arctic arrive too late for the chicks to make use of this burst of
38:47insects.
38:48And so they don't have good growing opportunities, and that makes these birds smaller than they actually should be.
39:00For the godwit chicks too, it's a race against time.
39:06Once the chicks hatch, both parents take care of the chicks for at least the first three weeks or so
39:11that they're around.
39:12But then at some point, the female will actually take off, and it'll just be left up to the male.
39:18And the male will see the chicks through to fledging before he too takes off, and then the chicks are
39:24left all alone.
39:34As the days shorten in the Arctic, the young shorebirds embark on their first and most dangerous migration.
39:42Their maiden flight is a miracle and a mystery.
39:47They're going home.
39:50A home they've never seen, but somehow always known.
39:58The first southward migration to me just seems epically difficult.
40:03You're making these incredible flights, having never done it before, and that alone.
40:10If you didn't survive that, it wouldn't surprise me.
40:14And then when you throw on top of it, the threats that birds are facing at each and every point
40:20during the course of their migration.
40:23Hurricanes.
40:25Droughts in the mid-continent.
40:29Hunting.
40:38Shorebirds are hunted all along their flyways.
40:42In France alone, thousands of red knots are killed each year.
40:48These are mainly juveniles because they are a bit more naive than adults.
40:53They're shot on their migration.
40:57Curleys are shot at just after they leave the breeding grounds and are subject to hunting pressure all the way
41:02through their south mound migration.
41:18Curlews that dodge the hunters in northern China face other perils as they head southward to refueling grounds in the
41:25Yellow Sea.
41:28Among them is AAD.
41:38On the outskirts of Shanghai in Rudong County, the birds scour the shoreline for somewhere to feed.
41:47Thousands of kilometers of sea wall have replaced natural coastline along much of eastern China, taking out more than two
41:54-thirds of the habitat that eastern curlews use when they're on migration.
42:04Over two million acres of shorebird habitat have been lost to development in the Yellow Sea.
42:15The hope of finding safe harbor here gets slimmer every year.
42:22But AAD gets lucky.
42:26AAD found a patch of remaining habitat at Rudong, which is great quality habitat that thousands of shorebirds congregate on
42:34during migration.
42:37This intertidal flat is an oasis of mud amidst the concrete.
42:43Jing Li is the co-founder of a conservation group that campaigns to protect this vital shorebird refuge.
42:52She's seen firsthand how coastal development and local industries have put pressure on shorebirds like the curlew.
43:00I roughly counted there are maybe over 300 people or more, maybe 400 people walking on the mudflat at this
43:07moment.
43:09They are collecting hard clams because this is a mudflat for the famous local hard clam Wenge.
43:19Few shorebirds actually eat the clams.
43:23But they're competing for space on the mudflat.
43:30Grassroots activism and international collaboration are turning the tide in the Yellow Sea.
43:38Recently, development on the Rudong County mudflats has been stopped.
43:44I think that's a very, very hard decision for the government to make, but it's a super good decision.
43:51Because China sits in the middle of the flyway, we are taking the responsibility.
44:03To see the birds landing on the mudflat so beautifully.
44:08You have the connection with the free spirits of all these birds.
44:14And the way people kind of meeting the birds like a promise here every year.
44:20So it's like invisible connections with the human beings and the birds.
44:26It's just a, you cannot describe the feeling actually.
44:39On the America's flyway, young southbound Godwits are arriving in the prairie potholes of the Dakotas.
44:52The wetlands out here, we know, are less numerous today than they used to be.
44:59We don't really know how many of those wetlands we've lost, but, you know, by some estimates, maybe as many
45:05as 90%.
45:14We don't have to make a choice between farming and shorebirds.
45:22There are ways that these two things can coexist.
45:25These wetlands don't need to be there permanently.
45:31They just need to be there for the couple of weeks a year that birds really need them.
45:40The Godwits continue south, stopping in Panama.
45:54Where thousands of shorebirds congregate.
46:05A vision of grace amidst the degradation of their flyway.
46:09A vision of grace amidst the degradation of their flyway.
46:21And the maintenir will end on this place.
46:22And they have to be a terrific wind.
46:23And they were in the river.
46:23A dream of this mountain was dropped.
46:24In the dugout.
46:26In the dugout.
46:35The sea was a deep-poor that had been bearsed.
46:35In the dugout.
46:39At the lake of the cave.
46:39On the far side of the Pacific, AAD is winging her way home over the Philippines when a typhoon strikes.
46:59The massive storm with winds topping 80 miles an hour rips across the flyway.
47:08AAD is blown into a corner of Southeast Asia she's never seen before.
47:18Richard can only watch for Morton Bay, hoping she finds her way home.
47:25She ended up on a track going southwest and managed to find a large river mouth in Borneo
47:31that had suitable habitat and spent time actually kind of stopping and regrouping and refueling there.
47:50And then really, in an incredible turn of events, she took off on exactly the right orientation
48:00to bring her all the way back to Australia, entering Australia just over Darwin and actually
48:07stopping in the wetlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria for a few days.
48:27Gungalita Garawa people are custodians of an area in northern Australia the size of France.
48:34They've watched over it for many thousands of years.
48:48A flyway, you know, is like a string of pearls interconnected and you're only as strong as your weakest link.
48:55And it's only from standing back you see the whole thing.
48:58And it's the same here if each person along the flyway is sharing information,
49:02we see the bigger picture and only then do we understand or see the full painting, the beauty of it.
49:07Thanks to its traditional owners, this vast wetland is now a protected site.
49:16There's one bird in particular that impressed us, Far Eastern Curlew.
49:20Comes all the way from China and Siberian places and then he travels for days and nights non-stop.
49:27Pound for pound he's a little world champion and we want to dedicate a bit of our country to looking
49:31after him.
49:57After two more days of flying, AAD is home.
50:02Landing in Moreton Bay, just yards from where she left five months earlier.
50:09She and her fellow curlews have logged over 13,000 miles.
50:28One of the great causes for hope is the sheer number of good people around this flyway arguing passionately for
50:37the conservation of these birds.
50:40And these arguments are gaining traction and causing change.
50:57Oh my God. Do you guys see it? Oh, it's a transmitter bird. It's back from Siberia.
51:08There's a female that spent three and a half weeks in Siberia.
51:13Just enough time to show us that she was successfully reproducing.
51:20Oh, this is so great. Yeah.
51:24All across the southern hemisphere, shorebirds are coming home.
51:40We can learn from the birds because they tell a global story.
51:45They tell a story that the world has troubles.
51:49And we should actually listen to them.
51:57Shorebirds are incredibly well evolved for these flights.
52:01But the world that they're doing this in is changing very quickly.
52:06If we don't change the way we see ourselves in the land that we live in, we'll lose them.
52:14In a sense, we're kind of a flock. You know, we're all part of the same thing.
52:28You know, we're all part of the same, we're all part of the same time.
52:35We're all part of the same time.
52:35What I want to be doing on this island?
52:36Love you, love you.
53:02To learn more about what you've seen on this nature program, visit pbs.org.
53:17For more information visit pbs.org.