Birds: Episode Description

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Watch tropicbirds fly the gauntlet.

Watch Vogelkop bowerbirds display treasures.

More "Birds"

Birds have one feature that no other animal possesses: feathers. This allows them to solve life's challenges in radically different ways.

The male spatule-tail hummingbird performs extraordinary aerial displays, using fast-beating wings and super-long iridescent tail feathers. The red-billed tropic bird uses its incredible agility to outmaneuver attacking frigate birds in a high-speed aerial "dogfight."

Red knots migrate 10,000 miles every spring from wintering grounds in Argentina to nesting sites in Canada; and Antarctica's chinstrap penguins make an exhausting climb up the steep flanks of a glacier-covered volcano to get food to their chicks.

Birds also use color, song and ingenuity to win the hearts of their mates: Clarke's grebes perform a courtship dance that climaxes with the pair running on water in perfect synchrony; the male Vogelkop bowerbird employs bizarre rituals to impress a female; and in Kenya, 1,000 flamingos promenade side by side with neck feathers ruffled and heads held high.

TELEVISION FIRSTS

The male Vogelkop bowerbird building an ornate seduction parlor that lures in a willing mate.
The spatule-tail hummingbird courtship display, filmed in super high-speed.
Great white pelicans in raiding parties stealing gannet chicks from their nests.

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