Once, the Pacific Flyway was a river in the air—an ancient highway stretching 4,000 miles, guiding millions of wings from the frozen tundra of Alaska to the warmth of Mexico and beyond. Along its bends, California’s wetlands glittered like emerald oases, fed by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada, brimming with insects, seeds, and fish. For the long-billed dowitcher, for the teal, the pintail, the sandpiper, these were more than stopovers. They were lifelines.

But the river has dried. The snowpack has vanished. Rains no longer fall. Where there were once vast marshes, there is dust. Where there were insects, silence. The drought has carved hollows into the very heart of the flyway, and the birds—six million ducks, geese, swans, and countless shorebirds—arrive to find nothing.

The cost is brutal. Weakened travelers fall from the sky, their strength spent before the journey is done. Those that land gather in desperate numbers at the few scraps of water left. Crowded and starving, they are struck down by botulism and cholera, diseases that sweep like fire through flocks too dense to scatter. Thousands die in days.

The Pacific Flyway was built by time and instinct, a map etched into the veins of each bird. But even instinct cannot conjure food where none exists. For species like the dowitcher, the loss of California’s wetlands is more than a setback—it is a breaking point.

And yet, they come. From Alaska, from Siberia, from Canada, they still follow the invisible road, wings beating against the odds. To see them is to feel awe, and sorrow. For the highway in the sky remains—but the rest stops are gone