In 1961 a French pilot gave David Attenborough fragments of an eggshell from Madagascar, pieces of the largest bird egg ever laid, belonging to the extinct elephant bird. Decades later Attenborough returns to the island to see what has changed since that gift arrived and to look at the animals still holding on there. He travels through Madagascar's remaining forests, filming lemurs and other species that exist only on this one island, while logging for timber and mining for minerals strip away the habitat those species depend on. The elephant bird itself becomes a case study in loss: a creature that once stood taller than a person, driven to extinction after humans arrived, its eggs occasionally still turning up whole in the sand. Attenborough uses that history as a warning rather than a curiosity, setting the bird's disappearance against the pressures now facing Madagascar's living wildlife. The film stays with him in the field, watching what remains and asking what it would take to keep it from following the elephant bird.