SCOUTS OF DISTANT WORLDS
45 MINUTES - TERRA X
In late August, the storks in the Western German town of Bornheim start to get restless. Youngsters start to stray further and further from their familial nests. Suddenly, one day, all the young creatures are gone. “Migrating Birds - Scouts Of Distant Worlds” follows the young stork Borni on his first mammoth migration to Africa. Alone, long ahead of his parents, Borni sets off south with his three siblings. His trip is a perilous one with a number of potentially fatal stages. For the first time, a gyro-stabilized helicopter camera accompanies the passage of thousands of storks across the Strait of Gibraltar. Exhausted storks that are forced have to land in water die, and even ornithologists were astonished to discover that many of the birds actually exert themselves to the point of vomiting while making the passage.
150 years ago, bird experts had to examine the tips of arrows storks carried back with them from Africa to determine where they had spent the winter. Nowadays, tiny, high-tech transmitters attached to the birds register every movement of their flight and relay their GPS coordinates. Scientists can access a wealth of new data, including altitude, speed, air resistance and energy consumption, concerning bird migration. For Martin Wikelski, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, a new era has dawned. “By studying birds’ flight,” he says, “we can discover how the world is changing at any given location.”
But researchers still have a long way to go. As Konrad Lorenz found out, grey geese chicks can be accustomed to human beings, so they’re the ones enlisted to help calibrate the first generation of data transmitters. Only if the sensors measurements are precise, will future scientists be able to unravel the mysteries of bird flight and better understood everything from local wind conditions, catastrophic storms, incipient earthquakes and locust plagues. When birds change their flight routes, there’s always a reason. Swifts, for example, sense storms from 600 kilometers away. They can also sleep while flying, which allows them to spend days and even weeks aloft.
“Migrating Birds - Scouts Of Distant Worlds” uses both extensive CGI animation sequences and breathtaking aerial footage to illustrate birds’ migration from Europe to Africa. The film tags along with goslings as they discover the adventure of flying – in the service of science. Despite all the groundbreaking discoveries of recent years, we still don’t completely understand how birds find their way. “There are a couple of really burning questions,” says ornithologist Peter Berthold, Wikelski’s predecessor in Radolfzell. “Maybe someday the result will be a Nobel Prize.”
150 years ago, bird experts had to examine the tips of arrows storks carried back with them from Africa to determine where they had spent the winter. Nowadays, tiny, high-tech transmitters attached to the birds register every movement of their flight and relay their GPS coordinates. Scientists can access a wealth of new data, including altitude, speed, air resistance and energy consumption, concerning bird migration. For Martin Wikelski, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, a new era has dawned. “By studying birds’ flight,” he says, “we can discover how the world is changing at any given location.”
But researchers still have a long way to go. As Konrad Lorenz found out, grey geese chicks can be accustomed to human beings, so they’re the ones enlisted to help calibrate the first generation of data transmitters. Only if the sensors measurements are precise, will future scientists be able to unravel the mysteries of bird flight and better understood everything from local wind conditions, catastrophic storms, incipient earthquakes and locust plagues. When birds change their flight routes, there’s always a reason. Swifts, for example, sense storms from 600 kilometers away. They can also sleep while flying, which allows them to spend days and even weeks aloft.
“Migrating Birds - Scouts Of Distant Worlds” uses both extensive CGI animation sequences and breathtaking aerial footage to illustrate birds’ migration from Europe to Africa. The film tags along with goslings as they discover the adventure of flying – in the service of science. Despite all the groundbreaking discoveries of recent years, we still don’t completely understand how birds find their way. “There are a couple of really burning questions,” says ornithologist Peter Berthold, Wikelski’s predecessor in Radolfzell. “Maybe someday the result will be a Nobel Prize.”
Written, directed and produced by:
Petra Höfer and Freddie Röckenhaus
Producers: Francesca D‘Amicis, Susanne Rostosky, Kay Schlasse, Friederike Schmidt-Vogt
Aerial Photography: Peter Thompson, Irmin Kerck, Stefan Urmann
Ground Camera: Tobias Kaufmann
Video-Editing: Johannes Fritsche
Computer Images: Dave Corfield, Liz Elkington, Craig Howarth, 422 South
Line Producer: Tine Marzi
Narrator: Dietmar Wunder
Commissioning Editors: Marita Hübinger (ARTE), Friederike Haedecke, Katharina Kohl (ZDF)
A colourFIELD production commissioned by ZDF in co-operation with ARTE