Winged Migration - Jacques Perrin
In a DVD that every bird lover should own, Winged Migration has very little talk or plot. Instead, you get an entire movie dedicated to images and sounds of birds.
I first saw this movie on a flight, in one of those tiny seat-back screens on the airplane. I was transfixed by the brilliant images the filmmakers had - with no special effects - of geese flying across gorgeous landscapes, of tiny water birds going about their life, about birds raising their young, about all the trials and tribulations involved in the life of a bird.
This isn't about a constructed plot of "See Jane, our target bird, as she slowly builds her nest. We'll follow Jane around and pretend we know what she's thinking." Instead, it lets the birds speak for themselves. We see them search for food, soar on air currents, weather out rainstorms, and much more. The lack of commentary is wonderful - it lets us simply enjoy the beauty and grace of nature.
Because this is a story about real nature, not all of it is "pretty". Birds have to struggle to survive, and that struggle is shown here. Birds fight over food. A baby bird pushes a weaker sibling out of the nest. Birds eat and are eaten. A scene with hunters is involved too. None of these are gory at all - this is NOT a show about violence. But it does make you consider the life and death decisions that birds have to fight their way through in order to survive. It's easy for us, behind a glass window, to think the birds on the branches are pretty fluffs of joy. But each bird has had to weather numerous hazards and risks to achieve adulthood, and the DVD tells their tale.
I highly recommend this for all ages of birding, although if you watch this with a child under 10, I'd be prepared to talk about some of the scenes afterwards and why they were included in the documentary.
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