Katharina Huchler is about to become
a foster mother.
And these are her new babies –
28 of one of the world’s rarest birds,
the northern bald ibis.
You really quickly fall in love with them.
They were hunted to extinction in Europe
over 400 years ago.
These chicks were born in a zoo.
Katharina’s task is to teach them to become
wild, free birds.
To do that,
she must convince them that she’s their mother.
It’s a process called imprinting.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Oh, no, we got it all round.
Feeling really tired.
Yeah, I’d really like to sleep a little bit more.
As the weeks pass, the bond grows.
And then, it is time for the next stage
in becoming wild birds.
They move to a field in the Austrian Alps.
These are migratory birds.
In autumn, they must fly south
to their warm feeding grounds in Italy.
They know that they need to go somewhere,
but they don’t know in which direction and how far.
So they need to learn the route from their parents.
Their human mothers must show them the way.
This is where the imprinting is put to the test.
Will the birds follow them?
Even in a microlight?
Getting too close is dangerous
for both birds and humans.
After a wobbly start,
at last they settle.
The imprinting has worked.
What we are trying to do,
apart from saving the ibis, is trying to give hope to people.
If you can bring back one species,
you can also do it with others.
