Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way

The short film Voices of the Pacific Flyway documents how three human communities on North America’s west coast interact with – and are connected by – the flight paths of migratory seabirds. With sweeping cinematic shots, a filmmaking team from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in New York traces the movements of several species across seasons and national borders while zooming in on local human populations along the route. In the town of San Quintín, Mexico, the seabirds’ late-fall arrival is greeted by a joyful festival. In the early spring, researchers working on the coast of the US state of Washington engage in a tagging initiative to track their movements. And in Hooper Bay, Alaska, where the arrival of birdsong corresponds with the thawing of the landscape, a Yup’ik community gathers eggs in an annual harvest that’s endured for centuries, but is today threatened by climate change.