Birds are really key to human existence one way or another, anywhere in the world.
When I was growing up in the springtime when the east wind blows. When the hills
start to appear...we smell the tundra, we loved the sound of the birds.
My mom told me the names of the birds and what kind of ground they laid their nests in.
Every day I would go out gathering eggs from around town. The little ones for the,
for the kids and I have grandkids that love to eat eggs.
When I come home I'm going to cook them.
When I finally realized that the birds always go away for the winter,
I used to cry for them and wish that I could go with them and
come back with them.
Okay...Oh, Marbled godwits flying!
When you are a shorebird and are flying
around this area, you see this place, and you say "Oh my God!", this is heaven,
is an oasis.
One, two, three.
We got some sandpipers, they're
all taking advantage of the tide receiving and starting to forage.
A lot is not understood yet
about their movements, where they go, their
important stopover sites.
With this particular study that's a key first step to
understand where these birds are going and what factors and threats that
they're experiencing throughout the annual cycle.
Right now we lack that information
and if we're going to conserve the population we first need
to know where they're going.
It's two hours out so let's do a radio.
We maybe have one person stationed on either end to move birds, but also a person in the
middle. There's lots of different kinds of fieldwork that we do and I don't
think there's anything like what we're doing now in terms of trying to catch a
bunch of shorebirds. It's a really incredible challenge.
We're not able to do anything unless the tide moves up a lot, very quickly.
When we're getting close to firing the cannon, then gets really tense.
You can feel the adrenaline.
I'm sure that my heart rate is 180 beats per minute and I know
everybody else too-- they're feeling the same thing, that same excitement and
anticipation and hope that things are gonna work out.
There's a massive flock
in the air over there.
"Laura are those all on the point?"
--"Yes, thousands of them."
--"Charge the canon net."
--"The net's charged."
--"Three, two, one, fire."
--"Okay everybody, come on, pull back."
They're built through evolution to be able to
travel thousands and thousands of miles, multiple times a year.
--"3PL was 102."
--"Right."
Truly incredible migrations from such small birds is kind of an inspiring feat and
it's kind of hard to wrap your head around the fact that that bird on the
beach is also going to be the same bird on the beach in Mexico or in South
America or up in Alaska.
--"And diagonal tarsus is 33.1."
So the last year we did this,
we put 20 tags out and they worked amazingly well. We tracked 17 birds to breeding areas.
This is the GPS transmitter; it'll send information to
the satellites that will then be able to to download and that'll tell us where
she's going...until it falls off. Because these feathers will eventually grow back
in and then the transmitter just falls off.
All right, safe journey!
Perfect.
We love the way it sounds in the Springtime.
Our tundra's alive, our air is alive.
All winter long, all we hear is just wind, "shhhhh", with the snow...
Once we start hearing the birds it's music to our ears. We start feeling more alive.
Our ancestors, they chose this area because we have everything here: We have
the sea, we have our Bay, we have the land and we have the waterfowl and the shorebirds
that come. We've lived like this for thousands of years.
In our language we call men, "Angun"
and "Angun" means provider...
And a good hunter is called a "nukalpiaq" and he'll go out bird hunting and
catch a lot of birds to bring home. He'll go seal hunting and catch seals and come
home. He'll go whale hunting and catch whales and come home because he knows where
all those animals and fish are.
As a child I started egg hunting with my mother.
We'd walk starting about 8:00 in the morning.
We would be out from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 in the evening.
The whole day out looking for eggs.
Subsistence still is a big part of our culture here in Hooper Bay.
Growing up we knew which way we could and we couldn't go...
Before GPS it was all in our head, you know? (laughs)
We sit down and watch it and then
pretty soon it goes into the nest and we tell them,
"See, you just wait. It'll show you where its nest is."
(ChiId)--"I found eggs! The small ones."
They're enjoying it and we love it. It's a time of
togetherness that is one of the main things in our culture that we love.
It brought all our families together when we'd have to go and spend a few days out,
it would make us closer.
It is in our heart, it's running through our blood
because it's always been taught from generation to generation for thousands of years.
It's something that we don't want to let go of.
We're doing our part here but you know what if the rest of the world don't care?
They look at it as, "It's just a bird!", but we look at it as our way of life.
I believe that if you take care of a bird or animal, it'll take care of you back...
Or something you know?
Something in return.
But I think that's true and that's being in harmony.
you