42x10 - Flyways

[bunniefuu]

♪♪

FULLER:
I love Eastern curlews.

They're majestic.
They're stately.

They are powerful fliers.

They have a purpose.

LINSCOTT: The way a group
of godwits looks

when it takes to the air,
the way they move together...

move with the wind, give this
embodied shape to the wind.

It is remarkable.

NARRATOR: Shorebirds are Earth's
most global citizens,

crossing from one end of the
world to the other each year.

Yet below them,
once familiar landscapes

are giving way to development,
drought, and rising seas.

Scientists are doing their best
to map their epic journeys

and the dangers they face

as they follow the flights
of these heroic birds.

LINSCOTT: I hope I might even
catch up with her

in a couple of weeks in a very
different part of the world.

I wish her the best.

She's got a really
long way to go.

♪♪

♪♪

NARRATOR: On beaches and tidal
mudflats all around the world,

you'll see them
in their thousands...

...shorebirds.

There are more than 200 species
on the planet...

...feeding on the teeming life
between the tidelines.

♪♪

Then, from one day to the next,

they'll be gone
on an extraordinary journey.

They're heading
for their breeding grounds,

up to 9,000 miles away,

following ancestral flyways
that wrap around the globe.

♪♪

Shorebirds, like this
little Western sandpiper,

are supreme endurance athletes.

They can fly for days and nights
without landing...

over cities...

and deserts...

and trackless oceans.

[ Thunder rumbling ]

♪♪

The bogs and tundra
of the Arctic north.

Here, in the endless
summer daylight,

their chicks can feed
on clouds of insects.

And in just a few weeks,
they'll gain the weight

to follow their parents
south again.

♪♪

But the world beneath
their wings is changing.

Shorebirds are among the most
threatened birds on the planet.

♪♪

We're going to fly with
three of these adventurers

and share the elation
and the anxiety

of the men and women
who track their migrations

from three separate continents.

From the far south
of South America...

from the desert beaches
of West Africa...

and from Australia,
in a place called Moreton Bay...

FULLER: See that curlew
up there flying?

JACKSON: Yeah!

NARRATOR: ...around 500 square
miles of mudflats and sandbanks

on Australia's east coast.

Every March,
biologist Richard Fuller

and his colleague Micha Jackson
come here

to watch the shorebirds fatten
up for their journey north.

JACKSON: Couple of hundred birds
there, I think.

NARRATOR
Richard's special interest --

the largest migratory
shorebird in the world --

the Far Eastern curlew.

FULLER:
I love Eastern curlews.

They're majestic.

They're stately.

They are powerful fliers.

They have a purpose.

They're on a mission.

And although
they're a brown bird,

but the intricacy
of their plumage

and the patterning on them is
just fascinating and beautiful.

NARRATOR: These magnificent
birds fly more than 7,000 miles

to their breeding grounds
in north Asia and back again.

Over the course
of its 20-year lifespan,

an Eastern curlew travels
the distance

from the Earth to the Moon.

To make these prodigious
flights, it must have fuel.

It needs to gain up to half
its bodyweight in fat.

FULLER:
A curlew's diet is comprised

almost completely
of crustaceans.

But they have a particular
predilection for crabs.

They love crabs.

The curlew will probe
into the ground,

you know, often 20 centimeters
down, grab a crab,

and when it's successful,
you'll see a curlew rip its bill

out of the sediment,
and it will be

kind of manipulating
the crab in its bill,

sometimes tossing it up
into the air,

to get it in the right position,

and then it goes in,
in one gulp.

♪♪

NARRATOR: But the curlew's
feeding grounds

in Moreton Bay are shrinking.

Human encroachment has been
going on for decades.

FULLER: There's every chance
the Eastern curlew

could be extinct
within a few decades,

and that's a terrifying thought.

♪♪

NARRATOR
On the other side of the world,

where the Sahara
meets the Atlantic,

huge flocks of hungry birds
are jostling

for a spot on the beach.

Busy and beak-down in the mud

is our West African migrant --
the red knot.

GILS: They are so pretty!

NARRATOR
These plucky little birds

must double their weight
in just a few weeks

to power their


from Mauritania to Siberia,
where they breed.

But red knots, too,
are struggling.

GILS: We had a half a million
red knots in the 1980s,

and nowadays it's only 100,000.

So a loss of 80%
in just 40 years.

♪♪

NARRATOR
Dutch ecologist Jan van Gils

has been studying the red knot
for 30 years.

It's not just
the red knot population

that's declining.

The individual birds
are shrinking, too.

GILS: The bill is getting
shorter,

the wing is getting shorter,

the legs are getting shorter.

And you can say,
"Well, who cares?

Smaller red knots?"

But what is important,
if you come here

as a smaller red knot
in Mauritania,

you have a big problem.

NARRATOR
Jan and his colleagues

from the University
of Nouakchott

take samples of the mud
the bird feeds in.

GILS: Oh, yeah! Oh!

Look at that.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

So, this is the food

that the red knots really,
really like.

They ingest
these bivalves whole,

and they crush these bivalves
in their stomach.

So, they have a very
strong stomach.

They need good food.

They need the bivalves like this
in order to make it

to Northern Siberia.

But these birds
are becoming smaller,

so maybe all these bivalves
are actually way too deep

for the knots to reach.

NARRATOR
So what are they eating instead?

GILS: The birds were roosting
here this morning

and we see signs of where they
were roosting, we see tracks.

Here it is.

NARRATOR: The red knots'
droppings provide the evidence.

GILS: A normal knot dropping is
full of fragments of shellfish.

They have switched diets

from their favorite bivalves
to sea grass.

So, it is, in a way,
a very sad story

because this shows they are
fueling up for Siberia

on very poor-quality food.

♪♪

NARRATOR: In Chiloé Island,
more than halfway down

the long coast of Chile,

our South American voyager
dances on the wind.

LINSCOTT: The way a group
of godwits looks

when it takes to the air,

the way they move together...

move with the wind, give this
embodied shape to the wind.

It is remarkable.

NARRATOR
As long-distance athletes,

Hudsonian godwits outperform
almost every other shorebird.

Each year they fly 9,000 miles,
from Chile to Alaska.

Most make just one or two
refueling stops.

But their options
are narrowing by the year.

Jennifer Linscott has joined
an international network

of scientists studying the
migration of Hudsonian godwits.

LINSCOTT:
We really don't know

how many of those sites exist,

and we don't know how
they are changing over time.

We know that it's now
a landscape

that's been completely
re-engineered for agriculture.

Godwits, like many other
migratory shorebirds,

are in decline.

And we think that that likely
has a lot to do

with what's happening
during migration.

♪♪

NARRATOR
The best way to get answers,

the scientists all agree,

is to attach GPS trackers
to individual birds.

FULLER: Tracking goes to the
heart of what conservation is.

You can describe the migration
of the species by mapping it,

by understanding
the places it visits

and crucially
by understanding

what threats they're facing
along the flyway.

NARRATOR: But to attach
a tracker on a bird,

first, you have to catch it.

In Australia...

...in South America...

and in West Africa,
the nets are being set.

Jan is hoping to catch
some red knots

as they fly in
to roost at night.

FULLER: Oh, this is great.

There's birds coming in
to the catching area.

NARRATOR: But Richard and his
team must wait for the curlews

to gather in precisely
the right spot.

FULLER: Eastern curlews

are exceptionally difficult
birds to catch.

They're very, very wary.

[ Sighs ]

Come on, birds.

[ Wind whistling ]

NARRATOR
So must Jennifer in Chile.

[ Birds chirping ]

LINSCOTT: This is the part
we can't control.

We just have to wait,
wait for the tide to come in,

wait for the birds to move.

Wait for them to move
to the right spot.

NARRATOR: In Australia,
the moment arrives.

MAN:Everybody ready.



NARRATOR: But for Team Curlew,
it's a miss.

♪♪

Will Team Godwit in Chile
have better luck?

MAN:Tres, dos, uno.

¿Bolsa?

WOMAN:Bolsa.

Tal vez nos vemos
un poco estresadas

pero es para apurarnos
y que las aves lleguen pronto.

MAN:Dos.

LINSCOTT:
We got about, hmm, 30...



♪♪

NARRATOR: Jan and his team
have also netted some red knots.

GILS: So...

it seems we have 13 red knots.

So, that's really awesome.

♪♪

NARRATOR: In Mauritania...

and in Chile,

the satellite trackers
are fitted.

♪♪

Despite months of trying,
Richard and his team

in Moreton Bay have failed
to catch a single curlew.

♪♪

But there is one bird
that they tagged back in 2017

that is still transmitting
her location.

Her name is AAD.

She's a tough,
successful traveler.

Richard has already
tracked her twice,

all the way to northern China
and back here to Moreton Bay.

FULLER: I have a high sense
of anticipation right now,

an excited expectation.

But I'm also apprehensive,
I think, and deeply concerned.

Will she find what she needs
along her migration journey?

NARRATOR: As March draws the
curtain on the southern summer,

shorebirds start to stir
with yearning for the north.

The scientists call it
migratory restlessness.

♪♪

FULLER: You can see them
getting excited;

calling to each other,
maybe taking short flights.

But then, eventually,
a group will decide,

"This is the moment."

NARRATOR:
AAD spreads her wings.

FULLER: The first bird
of the expedition in the air.

♪♪

NARRATOR: And in Chile,
Jennifer and the team

send the godwits on their way.

LINSCOTT: I hope, you know,
I'll be in the same area

where she's likely to stop
along the way.

So there's a chance I might even
catch up with her

in a couple of weeks in a very
different part of the world.

I just wish her the best.

She's got a really
long way to go.

♪♪

NARRATOR: Thousands of miles of
ocean lie between the shorebirds

and their first hope of rest.

[ Thunder rumbling ]

A migrating shorebird
may not need to sleep.

It rests half its brain while
the other half remains alert.

♪♪

It's thought that pigments
in its eyes let it perceive

the Earth's magnetic field
and stay on course.

♪♪

At night, it can navigate
by the stars.

♪♪

The godwits fly over


They can't glide or swim,

so must beat their wings
continuously...

...crossing over Central
American and the Gulf of Mexico.

After six days and nights
without food, water, or rest,

they reach the coast of Texas.

But the land below
is in severe drought.

Tracking shows the birds are
slowing down and making turns,

searching perhaps for a refuge
that isn't there.

And so, they press on.

Shorebirds burn fat for water
as well as energy.

They can even digest parts
of their own organs

to stay hydrated.

And when their bodies are pushed
to their utmost limit,

they burn the very muscle
that beats their wings.

At last, the godwits
find a place to rest and feed

in South Dakota.

LINSCOTT: South Dakota
is filled with wetlands.

They're just divots
in the landscape

that were carved out
by the movement of a glacier,

and now they fill with snowmelt
and rainwater every spring.

♪♪

As soon as summer rolls in
and the temperatures climb,

that water's going to evaporate,
but for now, it's perfect.

It's exactly the kind of habitat
that's gonna help them

find the fuel that they need
to keep migrating.

♪♪

NARRATOR: Every spring,

Jennifer spends weeks
scouring South Dakota,

searching for the birds
she tagged in Chile.

LINSCOTT: They have been
migrating through

this ephemeral landscape
for thousands of years,

so they're evolved for that.

But the rates at which things
are changing

are much faster
than they've ever been.

We don't know if godwits
can cope

with this kind
of variability now

in the way that they've
coped with it in the past.

♪♪

Looks like it's right back here.

Oh, yeah, that's a godwit.

KYLIE: Godwit? Nice.

[ Birds chirping ]

LINSCOTT: Looks like
there's more than one.

KYLIE: Ooh.

Wait, is that a whole group
of godwits, do you think?

LINSCOTT: Yeah, I think so.
KYLIE: Yeah? Cool.

LINSCOTT: One, two, three.

You can feel, in a way,
just watching them,

how long of a journey it's been
and how hungry they are.

It's incredible.

You know, we spend so much time
out here

looking and looking and looking.

And then to finally see one
out in the middle of a --

of a cornfield, you know,
a godwit

that we might have seen in Chile
not that long ago...

...it's a great feeling.

NARRATOR: In Western Europe,

the red knots also need
to refuel

on their journey
from West Africa to Siberia.

They flock to the vast
tidal mudbanks

that stretch along
the Dutch and German coasts --

the Wadden Sea.

♪♪

GILS: This is the westernmost
part of the Wadden Sea.

It's a major staging site
for the birds

on their way to the Arctic.

♪♪

They stay here
for, like, two, three weeks

in order to gain strength again

to travel all the way
to Siberia.

♪♪

Yes, we have,
currently two birds

that we caught in Mauritania
just a few weeks ago.

When you see birds that you have
tagged yourself

and they arrive here
in the Wadden Sea,

ahh, that's so cool.

NARRATOR:
But at this moment,

Jan's elation
turns to bitter disappointment.

GILS: We have a new problem,
and it's the w*r in Ukraine.

And, ahh, we actually just heard
from the Ministry

that we cannot go to Siberia.

We are forced to ban
our connections

to Russian scientists
right now from this moment.

And we just heard we cannot go.

It's a huge frustration.

♪♪

These birds are going to Russia.

They're crossing borders
that we cannot cross this year

and maybe next year,
and God knows for how long.

♪♪

NARRATOR: From Moreton Bay,

Richard watches
his curlew's journey north.

FULLER: We've tracked AAD

crossing over
the Great Barrier Reef,

Cape York, Papua New Guinea,
still flying,

over some of the highest
mountains in Southeast Asia

pushing north,
over the Philippines,

and she's touched down
in Taiwan.

♪♪

NARRATOR: In Taiwan,

birdwatching
is a national passion.

WOMAN: [ Speaking
native language ]

FULLER: We immediately notified
birdwatchers in Taiwan

and the messages
went out on social media,

hundreds of people
began searching for AAD.

ZHENG-FENG:
[ Speaking native language ]

NARRATOR: It is retired vet
Li Zheng-Feng

who scores the jackpot.

♪♪

WOMAN:
[ Speaking native language ]

ZHENG-FENG:
[ Speaking native language ]

FULLER: We can track birds
with satellite transmitters,

but when you see one
on the ground,

it's really the holy grail.

That's an on-ground
confirmed observation

of the bird
that's just been a dot

on a computer screen
up until that point.

So, I'm super excited
about that,

and I'm excited to learn
where she goes next.

♪♪

NARRATOR: Where AAD goes next
is northern China,

where she and her forebears have
been nesting for generations.

But Richard fears that,
year by year,

her chosen breeding ground

is less likely
to bring her success.

FULLER:
This region of China

has undergone
massive transformation.

Those wonderful grassy,
forested, mosaic, wilderness

and swamplands have been
converted into rice paddies.

So, now some of our curlews,
they're literally using

the last remaining patches
of that original habitat,

and we see birds making forays
out into the rice paddies,

perhaps forlornly
looking for food.

There won't be much for them.

Yet we see them still
searching there.

The birds that traditionally
breed in China,

I think are now
under immense threat

and likely to be
declining really fast.

NARRATOR: Many other shorebird
species nest farther north,

in the marsh and tundra
of the Arctic.

As the snows melt and the air
warms, the godwits arrive

in the boglands
of Alaska's Beluga River.

In their 5-week journey,

they've demonstrated a mastery
of navigation,

as well as extraordinary
stamina.

Astonishingly, many of them land
within a hundred yards

of where they were born.

Jennifer's colleague
Nathan Senner

leads the godwit research
here in Alaska.

SENNER: All of Jenny's birds

have made their way back
to Alaska

and are hopefully finding each
other as quickly as they can

and getting on
with the breeding season

because, you know,
they've got only 10 weeks here.

What we've found is that
they're remarkably able to,

in some cases,
lay their first egg

within five days
of getting here.

NARRATOR:
The researchers need to know

how many chicks will survive
this year to fly south.

SENNER: So, we have to find
the nest and then,

once the eggs hatch,

put tracking devices
on the chicks

and follow their movements
and their survival

over the course of their
development here in the bog.

NARRATOR:
On the other side of Alaska,

Jan is on the trail

of a different population
of red knots.

The birds he tagged
in Mauritania

are on their way
to Siberia without him.

So now, he and his team
are searching for nests

without any tracking devices
to guide them.

♪♪

They play red-knot calls
over a speaker,

hoping to attract adult birds

that they can follow
to their nests.

[ Bird calls playing ]

GILS: But knots in the Arctic
are very, very cryptic.

They have feathers with
the color of the lichens

on the rocks here.

So there are thousands of rocks,

and they all look
like red knots.

NARRATOR: After two weeks
of fruitless hunting,

Jan's team tries out
a new approach --

a drone with an infrared camera

they hope will detect
the warm-blooded red knots

nesting in the frozen tundra.

GILS: Oh, my God.

NARRATOR:
And at last, they spot one.

GILS: Ah, I feel excited.

I feel really excited.

It heats me up in the cold.

♪♪

NARRATOR: Back in Beluga,

Nathan knows the godwits'
breeding area intimately,

but it's no less of a wonder
each time he finds a nest.

♪♪

[ Bird chirping ]

SENNER: You can see the bill of
the chick starting to poke out.

This bird is gonna hatch
tomorrow morning.

NARRATOR: Nathan marks
the location of the nest

so his team can return tomorrow.

SENNER: If we're not there when
the chick actually hatches,

we're never likely to see them

because they are moving away
from the nest

within a couple of hours
of hatching,

and it's incredibly difficult
to find them in the bog

after they've actually
left the nest.

NARRATOR: And scientists

aren't the only ones
searching for nests.

♪♪

Hidden cameras reveal
a variety of predators.

♪♪

♪♪

SENNER: Uh-oh.

That's not good.

I found an egg

with some, like, an open egg
with some blood in it

that looks to me more like it
was eaten

than, like, it hatched.

That another one?

Alright, well, let's leave
these parents to their anguish.

Yeah, not good.

You're rooting for the birds.
That's why we're here.

I mean, it is part of
the whole process, but as --

Yeah, when you've watched a nest
for a long time,

it's not a good ending.

♪♪

NARRATOR:
It's June in the Arctic.

The warm air buzzes
with insects.

Summer is here

and from those hollows
in the scrub emerges...

life.

♪♪

Nathan and his team
have returned

to one of their godwit nests,

searching for newly
hatched chicks.

♪♪

[ Birds chirping ]

SENNER:
Can I hand you the first one?

WOMAN: Gosh, they are really
cute, kinda goofy.

SENNER: There we go, 25.

WOMAN #2:
Look at those floppy legs.

SENNER:
When they come out of the egg,

some parts of them
are more developed than others

and so that
they can run across the bog

as quickly as they're
out of the egg,

they've got really
developed legs,

whereas their bill, you can see,

is nothing like
the adult bill yet.

It's quite short because

they just preen insects
off the vegetation.

They're not probing
into anything.

And then the wings, of course,

they're not anywhere
near being ready to fly.

So those are the least
developed of all.

NARRATOR: And yet, those wings
are going to carry

the young bird 9,000 miles.

SENNER: The fact that this chick
in two months

is gonna go from 22 grams
to over 300 grams,

and it's gonna fly all the way
to southern South America,

that's a phenomenal --
phenomenal growth rate.

♪♪

NARRATOR:
In the tundra to the north,

Jan's infrared drone reveals

that one of his red knots'
clutches has hatched.

♪♪

WOMAN: Oh! Another chick.

MAN: Wow, nice!
GILS: Nice!

MAN: Tarsus is 28.3.

NARRATOR:
For the red knot chicks,

the first few weeks of life
are especially perilous.

Only about a quarter of them

will live long enough
to make the journey south.

GILS: He's going.
Here he is.

There we go!

Do your best, man!

NARRATOR: But Jan's main concern
is that even those that survive

will be smaller
than they ought to be.

GILS: Three weeks after the snow
has melted,

there's the insect peak
on which the chicks can feed.

With the rapid warming
of the Arctic,

the summer has already started.

These insects are emerging
earlier from the soil.

But what the birds do not do
is adjust their travel schedule.

So nowadays, these birds
in the Arctic arrive too late

for the chicks to make use
of this burst of insects.

And so, they don't have good
growing opportunities

and that makes these birds
smaller

than they actually should be.

NARRATOR:
For the godwit chicks, too,

it's a race against time.

SENNER: Once the chicks hatch,

both parents
take care of the chicks

for at least
the first three weeks

or so that they're around.

But then at some point, the
female will actually take off

and it'll just be left up
to the male,

and the male will see the chicks
through to fledging

before he too takes off.

And then the chicks
are left all alone.

♪♪

[ Wind whistling ]

NARRATOR: As the days shorten
in the Arctic,

the young shorebirds embark
on their first,

and most dangerous, migration.

Their maiden flight
is a miracle and a mystery.

They're going home...

a home they've never seen
but somehow, always known.

SENNER: The first southward
migration, to me,

just seems epically difficult.

You're making these incredible
flights,

having never done it before,

and that alone,
if you didn't survive that,

it wouldn't surprise me.

And then when you throw on top
of it the threats

that the birds are facing,

at each and every point during
the course of their migration --

hurricanes...

droughts in the midcontinent...

hunting...

[ g*nsh*t ]

♪♪

NARRATOR: Shorebirds are hunted
all along their flyways.

In France alone, thousands of
red knots are k*lled each year.

GILS: These mainly juveniles,

because they are a bit more
naive than adults,

they're shot on their migration.

FULLER: Curlews are shot at just
as they leave breeding grounds

and are subject
to hunting pressure

all the way through
their southbound migration.

♪♪

NARRATOR: Curlews that dodge
the hunters in Northern China

face other perils
as they head southward

to refueling grounds
in the Yellow Sea.

Among them is AAD.

♪♪

On the outskirts of Shanghai,
in Rudong County,

the birds scour the shoreline
for somewhere to feed.

FULLER: Thousands of kilometers
of seawall

have replaced
the natural coastline

along much of eastern China,

taking out more than
two-thirds of the habitat

that Eastern curlews use
when they're on migration.

NARRATOR: Over 2 million acres
of shorebird habitat

have been lost to development
in the Yellow Sea.

♪♪

The hope of finding safe harbor
here gets slimmer every year.

But AAD gets lucky.

FULLER: AAD found a patch
of remaining habitat at Rudong,

which is great-quality habitat,

that thousands of shorebirds
congregate on during migration.

NARRATOR: This intertidal flat
is an oasis of mud

amidst the concrete.

Jing Li is the co-founder
of a conservation group

that campaigns to protect
this vital shorebird refuge.

She's seen firsthand how coastal
development and local industries

have put pressure on shorebirds
like the curlew.

Few shorebirds
actually eat the clams.

But they're competing
for space on the mudflat.

Grassroots activism
and international collaboration

are turning the tide
in the Yellow Sea.

Recently, development on
the Rudong County mudflats

has been stopped.

♪♪

NARRATOR:
On the Americas flyway,

young southbound godwits

are arriving in the prairie
potholes of the Dakotas.

♪♪

LINSCOTT: The wetlands out here
we know are less numerous today

than they used to be.

We don't really know how many
of those wetlands we've lost,

but, by some estimates,
maybe as many as 90%.

♪♪

We don't have to make a choice
between farming and shorebirds.

There are ways that these
two things can co-exist.

These wetlands don't need
to be there permanently.

They just need to be there
for the couple of weeks a year

that birds really need them.

NARRATOR: The godwits continue
south, stopping in Panama...

♪♪

...where thousands
of shorebirds congregate...

♪♪

...a vision of grace amidst
the degradation of their flyway.

♪♪

On the far side of the Pacific,

AAD is winging her way home
over the Philippines...

...when a typhoon strikes.

[ Thunder rumbling ]

[ Wind howling ]

The massive storm, with winds
topping 80 miles an hour...

[ Lightning crashes ]

...rips across the flyway.

AAD is blown into a corner
of Southeast Asia

she has never seen before.

Richard can only watch
from Moreton Bay,

hoping she finds her way home.

FULLER: She ended up on a track
going southwest

and managed to find
a large river mouth in Borneo

that had suitable habitat...

♪♪

...and spent time
actually kind of stopping

and regrouping
and refueling there.

♪♪

And then really in an incredible
turn of events,

she took off in exactly
the right orientation

to bring her
all the way back to Australia,

entering Australia
just over Darwin

and actually stopping
in the wetlands

in the Gulf of Carpentaria
for a few days.

♪♪

NARRATOR: Gangalidda-Garawa
people are custodians of an area

in northern Australia
the size of France.

They've watched over it
for many thousands of years.

MAN: [ Speaks indistinctly ]

YANNER:
Right on the edge of the water.

A flyway, you know,
is like a string of pearls,

interconnected.

And you're only as strong
as your weakest link.

And it's only from standing back
you see the whole thing.

And it's the same here.

If each person along the flyway

is sharing information,
you see the bigger picture,

and only then do we understand,

see the full painting,
the beauty of it.

NARRATOR: Thanks
to its traditional owners,

this vast wetland
is now a protected site.

YANNER: There's one bird in
particular that impressed us --

the Far Eastern curlew,

comes all the way from China
and Siberia and places

and then he travels for days
and nights nonstop.

Pound for pound,
he's a little world champion

and we wanna dedicate
a bit of our country

to looking after him.

[ Birds chirping ]

♪♪

NARRATOR: After two more days
of flying, AAD is home...

landing in Moreton Bay,

just yards from where she left
five months earlier.

She and her fellow curlews
have logged over 13,000 miles.

♪♪

FULLER:
One of the great causes for hope

is the sheer number of good
people around this flyway

arguing passionately for
the conservation of these birds.

And these arguments
are gaining traction

and causing change.

♪♪

GILS:
Oh, my God, do you guys see it?

Oh, it's a transmitter bird!

It's back from Siberia.

It's a female that spent three
and a half weeks in Siberia,

just enough time to show us

that she was successfully
reproducing.

Oh, this is so great!

Yah!

NARRATOR: All across
the southern hemisphere,

shorebirds are coming home.

♪♪

GILS:
We can learn from the birds

because
they tell a global story.

They tell a story
that the world has troubles.

And we should actually
listen to them.

♪♪

LINSCOTT: Shorebirds are
incredibly well evolved

for these flights.

But the world that
they're doing this in

is changing very quickly.

If we don't change the way
we see ourselves

and the land that we live in,
we'll lose them.

In a sense,
we're kind of a flock,

we're all part
of the same thing.

♪♪

♪♪

To learn more about
what you've seen

on this
"Nature" program,

visit PBS.org.

♪♪

♪♪