- 1 day ago
Flyways are established, long-distance migratory flight paths used by birds twice a year between breeding and wintering grounds.
滨鸟每年沿着被称为“迁飞路线”（Flyways）的古老且鲜为人知的迁徙路径飞行数千英里。超过200个物种……
滨鸟每年沿着被称为“迁飞路线”（Flyways）的古老且鲜为人知的迁徙路径飞行数千英里。超过200个物种……
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AnimalsTranscript
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.
01:36She's got a really long way to go.
01:37And there he is.
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, feeding 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, following ancestral
02:45flyaways 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, over 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.
04:13And 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, from the desert beaches of West Africa, and from Australia, in a place
04:36called Morton Bay.
04:37Oh, I see that curlew up there, flying.
04:40Yeah.
04:41Around 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.
05:14They're stately.
05:15They are powerful flyers.
05:19They have a purpose.
05:20They're on a mission.
05:23And although they're a brown bird, but the intricacy of their plumage and the patterning on them is just fascinating
05:31and 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.
06:22The 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, sometimes tossing it up into the air to get it in the right position.
06:39And then it goes in, in one 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, huge flocks of hungry birds are jostling
07:25for 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 Mauritania 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.
08:30The wing is getting shorter.
08:32The legs are getting shorter.
08:34And you can say, well, who cares?
08:37Smaller 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.
08:58Oh, yeah.
08:59What?
08:59Look at that.
09:00Food of Red Knot.
09:01Loripas also.
09:02Loripas.
09:03Yeah, an old Loripas.
09:04Yes.
09:04Old Loripas.
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.
09:30So maybe all these bivalves are actually way too deep for the knots to be reached.
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.
09:52Here 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.
10:15Because this shows they are fueling up for Siberia on very poor 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.
11:26But their options are narrowing by the year.
11:31Jennifer Linscott has joined an international network of scientists studying the migration of Hudsonian Godwitz.
11:39We 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.
11:56And we think that that likely has a lot to do with 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,
12:29and crucially, by understanding 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,
12:52in South America,
12:54and in West Africa,
12:56the nets are being set.
13:00Jan is hoping to catch some red knots as they fly in to roost at night.
13:09This 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.
13:22They're very, very wary.
13:29Come on, birds.
13:33So 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.
14:37Three, two, one.
14:48Maybe we'll see a little stressed, but it's to hurry up and that the birds 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, so 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.
16:18Her name is A.A.D.
16:22She's a tough, successful traveller.
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, shorebirds 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 in a very different
17:58part 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,
20:11they burn the very muscle that beats their wings.
20:19At last, the Godwits find a place to rust 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 snowmelt 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?
21:57Nice.
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
22:20are.
22:21It's incredible.
22:24You know, we spend so much time out here looking and looking and looking and looking and then to finally
22:30see one out in the middle of a cornfield, you know, a Godwit that we might have seen in Chile
22:37not that long ago.
22:39So, it's a great feeling.
22:44In Western Europe, the Red Knotts 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.
23:00The Wadden Sea.
23:12This is the westernmost part of the Wadden Sea.
23:15The major staging site for the birds on their way to the Arctic.
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.
23:53Oh, this is so 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 and we actually just heard from the Ministry that
24:09we cannot go to Siberia.
24:12We are forced to ban our connections to Russian scientists right now from this moment and we just heard we
24:20cannot 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.
25:55There is Vietman Li Zhen Feng who scores the jackpot.
26:08It is retired vet Li Zhen Feng who scores the jackpot.
26:17I am shooting the first time.
26:19The first time I got the first one, I took the first one.
26:24It was also in the moment that the
26:27member of the Grand Canyon of the St.
26:27The leader of the St.
26:28the leader of the St.
26:28The leader of the St.
26:29It is to be a full-time
26:29to drive the head of the St.
26:31This time, he is the one who's been looking for.
26:35We were able to go to the phone
26:36to go to the online team.
26:39It was a lot to go to the station.
26:47We 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.
27:09Where AAD goes next is northern China,
27:12where 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.
27:27This region of China has undergone massive transformation.
27:33Those wonderful grassy forested mosaic wilderness swamplands
27:39have been converted into rice paddies.
27:44So now some of our curlews,
27:46they'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,
28:03yet we see them still searching there.
28:08The birds that traditionally breed in China,
28:11I think, are now under immense threat
28:13and likely to be declining really fast.
28:20Many other shorebird species nest farther north,
28:24in the marsh and tundra of the Arctic.
28:29As the snows melt and the air warms,
28:33the Godwits arrive in the boglands of Alaska's Beluga River.
28:39In their five-week journey,
28:41they've demonstrated a mastery of navigation,
28:45as well as extraordinary stamina.
28:51Astonishingly, many of them land within 100 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
29:08and are hopefully finding each other as quickly as they can
29:11and getting on with the breeding season,
29:13because, you know, they've got only ten weeks here.
29:18What we've found is that they're remarkably able to,
29:22in some cases, lay their first egg within five days of getting here.
29:30The 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,
29:41put tracking devices on the chicks and follow their movements
29:44and their survival over the course of their development here in the bog.
29:51On the other side of Alaska,
29:53Jan is on the trail of a different population of red knots.
29:58The birds he tagged in Mauritania
30:01are on their way to Siberia without him.
30:08So now, he and his team are searching for nests
30:11without any tracking devices to guide them.
30:19They play red knot calls over a speaker,
30:22hoping to attract adult birds that 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,
30:55Jan's team tries out a new approach.
30:58A drone.
30:59With an infrared camera they hope will detect the warm-blooded red knots
31:04nesting in the frozen tundra.
31:19Oh my god.
31:24And at last, they spot one.
31:27I feel excited.
31:29I 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.
32:17If we're not there when the chick actually hatches,
32:21we're never likely to see them,
32:23because they are moving away from the nest within a couple of hours of hatching,
32:27and it's incredibly difficult to find them in the bog after 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.
33:18odors.
33:20that's not good I found an egg with some like an open egg with some blood in it
33:27that looks to me more like it was eaten then like it hatched
33:35that another one all right well let's leave these parents to their anguish yeah
33:45not good you're rooting for the birds that's why we're here I mean it is part of
33:52the whole process but as yeah when you've watched the nest for a long time
33:58and it's it's not a good ending
34:06it's June in the Arctic the warm air buzzes with insects
34:15summer is here and from those hollows in the scrub emerges life
35:06Nathan and his team have returned to one of their Godwit nests searching for newly hatched chicks
35:30can't hand you the first one gosh they're really cute kind of goofy
35:40there we go 25
35:42look at those floppy legs
36:00when they come out of the egg some parts of them are more developed than others and so that they
36:06can run across the bog as quickly as they're out of the egg they've got really developed legs
36:12whereas their bill you can see is nothing like the adult bill yet it's quite short because they just
36:19preen insects off the vegetation they're not probing into anything and then the wings of course they're
36:25not anywhere near being ready to fly so those are least developed of all and yet those wings are going
36:31to carry the young bird 9,000 miles the fact that this chick in two months is going to go
36:39from 22 grams to
36:40over 300 grams and it's going to fly all the way to southern South America that's a phenomenal phenomenal growth
36:49rate
37:00in the tundra to the north
37:02Jan's infrared drone reveals that one of his red knots 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 here 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 is melted there's the insect peak on which the chicks can feed
38:24with the rapid warming of the Arctic summer has already started
38:30these insects are emerging earlier from the soil but 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 god with 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 will just be left up to the
39:17male
39:18and the male will see the chicks through to to fledging before he too takes off and then the chicks
39:24are left 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 home they've never seen
39:52but 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
40:16the threats that birds are facing at each and every point during the course of their migration
40:23hurricanes
40:25droughts in the mid-continent
40:29hunting
40:29hunting
40:38shorebirds are hunted all along their flyways
40:42in France alone thousands of red knots are killed each year
40:48these mainly juveniles because they are a bit more naive than adults
40:53they're shot on their migration
40:57curlews are shot at just after they leave the breeding grounds
41:00and they're subject to hunting pressure all the way through 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
41:31among them is AAD
41:38on the outskirts of Shanghai in Rudong County
41:41the birds scour the shoreline for somewhere to feed
41:47thousands of kilometers of sea wall have replaced natural coastline along much of eastern China
41:53taking out more than two-thirds of the habitat that eastern curlews use when they're on migration
42:03Over 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
42:25AAD found a patch of remaining habitat at Rudong which is great quality habitat
42:32that thousands of shorebirds congregate on during 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 first-hand how coastal development and local industries have put pressure on shorebirds like the curlew
43:00I roughly counted there may be over 300 people or more
43:04maybe 400 people working on the mudflat at this moment
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
43:49But it's a super good decision
43:51Because China sits in the middle of the flyway
43:55We are taking the responsibility
43:57Do you 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 you cannot describe the feeling actually
44:38It's just a big
44:39On the America's flyway
44:40Young 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
45:03But you know, by some estimates, maybe as many as 90%
45:14We don't have to make a choice between farming and shorebirds
45:22There are ways that these two things can co-exist
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
45:44Stopping in Panama
45:53Where thousands of shorebirds congregate
46:04A vision of grace amidst the degradation of their flyway
46:10There in the air from the mud
46:12Or the sky
46:13It's probably going to do too many...
46:17It's been a long time to train
46:24It's been so painful
46:24It's been a long time for me
46:24We were in the middle of the water
46:26We were in the back to the sea
46:26We were in the back to the sea
46:27So the winds of the sea
46:27It's been a long time to lean on
46:28Whereas the wind of the sea
46:28But the horizon of the sea
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 Moreton Bay, hoping she finds her way home.
47:25She ended up on a track going south-west and managed to find a large river mouth in Borneo that
47:32had suitable habitat.
47:38And 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 to bring her
48:00all the way back to Australia.
48:03Entering Australia just over Darwin and actually stopping 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.
48:39Is it a killer? What is it? Is it a fishing killer?
48:42Right on the edge of the water.
48:48Flyway, you know, is like a string of pearls interconnected.
48:52And 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, you see the bigger picture.
49:03And 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.
49:24And 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.
51:08It'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.
51:25All 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. And 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.
52:27over the same thing for them.
52:29We start in school and we're going home.
52:29We're going home.
52:31It hoy will be on the island through.
52:37That night on an island through a storm for us.
52:41Let's finish moving.
52:44Future Messenger Frontier.
52:44Her 26th ply Impact reflected in an island of those cities in the sand.
52:44It all means that there is no reason for the park or other people.
53:02To learn more about what you've seen on this nature program, visit pbs.org.
53:17For more information, visit pbs.org.
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