[dynamic music] - [Narrator] This is what the commute looks like for a coastal biologist off the coast of North Carolina.

- See the taller dunes with the vegetation.

When we get there, kind of just come through following our footprints, okay.

- Feels like a spy operation.

- [Biologist] It may have gone, it may have somehow gotten out of here.

- [Narrator] These bird nerds from Audubon are trying to find and band an oyster catcher chick, here at Lea Houthoff Island, off the coast of North Carolina.

- It's really difficult to tell individual birds apart.

But when you band a bird, and give it something identifiable, it suddenly becomes an individual.

And for scientists, it helps us learn about their demographics, their movements.

Parameters that help us to understand how they're doing, and what we might be able to do to conserve them, protect them, make sure that they're doing well.

[bird squeaks] - [Narrator] Oyster catchers look a little bit like a bird version of a clown.

And they're a beloved shorebird that serves as a bellwether for other species.

- What's affecting the oyster catcher is probably affecting the least terns, and the Wilson's plovers, and the common terns, and the black skimmers that are out here as well.

So we focus our efforts on monitoring them.

- [Narrator] But in order to monitor them, they have to find them.

- My sense is that maybe it's not in this clump of vegetation.

It does happen that, you know, you have to come back out and try again, and.

Oh, Kimmy, Kimmy, Kimmy, look.

It's right here.

It's literally right here.

That's the chick.

- [Kimmy] It was just right there the whole time?

- It was right there the whole time.

- [Narrator] Oyster catchers are unusual in that they're one of the few positive stories about birds right now.

- [Biologist] So we're gonna go band him and give him back to his parents.

- [Narrator] Globally, shorebirds are on the decline.

Many species have lost more than 50% of their populations over the last three decades.

Oyster catchers were on the same trajectory.

But after years of targeted conservation, the oyster catcher population has increased by 23%.

- [Biologist] It turns out that if you focus your management on a species, work to improve their productivity during the breeding season, try to protect their roosting sites in the non-breeding season, it turns out that you can turn their trajectory around.

- [Narrator] Here's the thing, oyster catchers and other shorebirds breed in the same areas that humans and their dogs like to play, barrier islands.

Crucially, they lay their eggs among the dunes, completely exposed to the heat.

The parents shield the eggs from the sun with their bodies.

And when humans or dogs scare the parents away, that egg can literally cook.

- So 10 or 15 minutes exposed without the care of the parent can spell doom for them.

And that's why disturbance, people often say, "Oh, well I know what the eggs look like, I'm not gonna step on them."

- It's like, yes, but you've separated parents from the eggs or the chicks.

And when the parents are separated from their young, just like we feel when we lose our kids at the mall, or we're not sure where our kids are, we're very nervous.

And because bad things could happen to them, they need us to look out for them.

And these guys need their parents to look out for them as well.

- [Narrator] That's why Audubon uses fencing to prevent people from stomping all over these dunes.

But they're also intentionally removing another threat to these birds.

Ghost crabs.

- [Biologist] Oyster catcher chicks are not very big, and a ghost crab can kill them with a single blow from its claw.

- [Narrator] Oyster catchers have high sight fidelity, meaning they often return to the same spots year after year to raise their young.

That's why Audubon's Anna Cheshire traps ghost crabs in those spots, and puts them somewhere else while the birds are too young to defend themselves.

- So you have to have enough of an angle that they can climb in, and then they get to the end of the tube, and then they drop into the bottom.

And then they can't get back into the tube to go back in.

- [Narrator] So this is a lot of management, protecting land, fencing off dunes, manually removing ghost crabs.

We asked the team what keeps them motivated to do this work.

- I'm in it for the money.

[laughing] - I want everyone to be able to be like, "Oh yeah, when I was young, they had all these birds."

And I want when their kids grow up to be like, "Yeah, I had these birds too."

And no, I mean, I love this work.

I love looking at the chicks and seeing my nests.

And it's always something new.

- They're just part of what makes our planet, our planet.

It just seems like it would be a pretty poor place if it was, if this was quiet.

Like if we weren't sitting here listening to the least terns and hearing the occasional willet, or the common nighthawk.

It just would, it would be a much poorer place if we didn't have them around.

All right, little guy.

Go live your best life.

[bird squeaking]