by Jim Stevenson
Many people have asked me about this movie and Liz and I finally sat down and watched it Monday night. So, here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth…

First, it is an entertaining movie with big-name actors, good, clean humor and a relatively decent plot. For those reasons alone, I would recommend it for people with an interest in birds. It’s also the first real attempt at Hollywood presenting birding to the American public, so the show has its positives.

Second, as anyone with a modicum of knowledge about birds will realize, the movie contains glimmers of realism, like the Holy Grail of Attu to the fallout on the Upper Texas Coast (although, characteristically of the movie’s inaccuracies, it showed a huge flock of blackbirds for their “fallout”).

Much of the bird stuff was inaccurate, in fact, with fictitious species like Large-footed Geese. Call notes were even worse, and many species were in places they would never be found in the real world. And while I’m not stuffy enough to let that ruin the movie (my dad would have been!), it is hard to understand why even an ordinary birder couldn’t have been employed to bring some harmless realism to the show.

In truth, though, the movie was a far better portrayal of birders than birds. More specifically, it detailed from the comical to the house-wrecking sacrifices some people make to chase rare birds and build their lists. With the three birders, one marriage was lost, one business nearly destroyed and a father-son relationship nearly bit the dust.

This is not fiction. I have seen all three of these played out with friends and acquaintances of mine in multiples, and I was the son in the third example. It took unsuccessfully chasing a Snowy Owl in Eufaula, Alabama, to make me start looking at birding as an obsession whose (lack of) practicality was indefensible.

As in the movie, competition for the largest list can divide would-be friends, make observers report faulty identifications (oh, how my father hated that!), and in general, make bird-watching into a selfish sport, rather than the nature study that so many find fulfilling.

Sadly, as the movie made birders look stupid, with the unfortunate inability for most to see the subtle difference between the sport of birding, and simple “bird watching,” a broad stroke of idiocy paints us all in a negative light.

Fairness compels me to say that not all birders fit this unfortunate mold. I have, for instance, a number of friends in nearby Brazoria County who not only practice their sport without the negative attributes depicted in the movie, their commitment to conservation, science and public environmental education serves as a beacon to all who claim to love nature.

People have to work out their own relationship the environment, whether it’s photography, hunting and fishing, animal behavior, listing to the birds, or enjoying the Great Outdoors in other ways. And if they want to have life lists, annual lists, county, yard, North American list, or whatever, that’s fine. At least with me. And yes, I still keep a yard list, and am proud it’s the highest in America. But I don’t have to travel much to compete!