A migration odyssey: Tagging whimbrel shorebirds

The whimbrel appear in the late afternoon sky above Deveaux Bank, a tiny island – a sandbar, really – just off the South Carolina coast south of Charleston. Crouched in the dunes, correspondent Martha Teichner watches with the scientists studying them.

University of South Carolina graduate student Maina Handmaker remembers the first time she saw what we were seeing: "And as we got nearer to sunset and high tide was coming in, it was just the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen – hundreds of whimbrel just streaming in over the horizon." Clouds of birds against the sunset. You tell yourself, memorize the sight, and then you whisper to your soul: I'm glad to be alive, so I can witness this astonishing thing.