Plot Synopsis

EARTHFLIGHT documents breathtaking flights on the wings of birds across six continents while experiencing the world's natural spectacles from a bird's-eye view. Each one-hour episode features a different continent, including: "North America," which chronicles snow geese, pelicans and bald eagles flying over the Great Plains, the Grand Canyon, Alaska and the Golden Gate Bridge as they encounter and engage with bears, dolphins, bison and spawning fish; "Africa," which highlights cape gannets joining the great sardine run and fish eagles, flamingos, kelp gulls and vultures in various regions of this animal-rich continent; "Europe," which features cranes and geese over Venice, Dover, and Edinburgh and birds that gather by the millions to breed and two-by-two to raise their families in Rome, the Loire Valley, Holland and Hungary; "South America," which documents condors and scarlet macaws in the Andes and the Amazon, giant petrels in Patagonia that shadow killer whales, hummingbirds feeding at Iguazu Falls, vultures riding the thermals over Rio de Janeiro, and black vultures targeting turtle eggs in Costa Rica; and "Asia and Australia," which captures footage of Japanese cranes dancing in the snow, swallows and swifts visiting the Forbidden City, lorikeets, cockatoos and budgies forming giant flocks in Australia, pigeons guiding viewers through India, and geese flying miles above the Himalayas; The sixth episode in the series, "Flying High," is a special program that reveals the techniques used to capture the footage in EARTHFLIGHT. PBS aired the U.S. premiere of this series on September 4, 2013, showing all six installment on consecutive Wednesdays at 8pm ET/PT as episodes of NATURE. Eleven months before the U.S. series premiere, Discovery aired a two-hour special, WINGED PLANET, which was a compilation of footage from this series.