The Life of Birds
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Movie Reviews of The Life of Birds
Movie Review: Our feathered friends
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the 6th entry in the David Attenborough Life series following The Private Lives of Plants. The groundbreaking first series Life on Earth was based on evolution and started with bacteria making its way up to modern humans over the course of 13 episodes. The Living Planet was 12 episodes long and dealt mainly with adaptation over a wide range of environments that also incorporated more Earth science along with the life science in terms of geology and environments. The Trials of Life was 12 episodes long and all about animal behaviour. Life in the freezer was 6 episodes long and specialized on the Antarctic. The Private life of Plants was another 6 episode series and focused entirely on botany.
With Life in the Freezer and The Private Life of Plants Attenborough made a new move to specialize instead of following the 12-13 episode discipline that started with Clark's Civilisations and Bronowski's The Ascent of Man and birthed other great series like Sagan's Cosmos, Attenborough now decides to detach from the shorter episode format of Freezer and Plants (an such as was in previous non-life series such as The Tribal Eye, The First Eden and Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives) and goes for a higher number of 10 instead of 6 instalments on another expert theme. Attenborough concentrates on one animal kingdom, the birds, and it's a real wildlife bonanza with many moments to leave you speechless.
While The Private Life of Plants was a somewhat still, though time-lapsed voyage, because they don't move very far very quickly, the Life of Birds is on the opposite end of the spectrum with birds darting around frequently to the point where slow motion is needed to see what just happened for the `blink and you miss it' moments. In this series Attenborough maybe visits more places and countries than all his series put together. Some of it though was covered before in Life on Earth, but you still want to see it again. Since birds do a lot of singing sound is of primary importance as much as the visuals, maybe even more so. This show literally turns your living room into a nature park with its superb audio. There are some sequences involving domesticated birds that have been imprinted and they can perform on cue, so you get some amazing shots, like birds flying with the camera. There is some CGI done for birds that are now extinct.
Major themes include when to fly and when not to fly, the mechanisms of flying, finding food, meat eating birds, fishing, bird signalling, finding mates, egg laying, parental care and endurance.
Overall it's an amazing production. Attenborough though is now 72 years of age and while he even appears swimming in some sequences, this is the series where his years are starting to show but its more than obvious that this isn't stopping him, not one little bit. The investigation and observations of birds is nothing short of stunning. This series also has one of Attenborough's greatest moments. The Lyrebird that can mimic cameras, a car alarm and a chain saw. The final episode includes human intervention including some conservation efforts that are nothing short of gobsmacking. Attenborough rounds off by making a final call for bird preservation. Ornithology has never been so well documented.
Movie Review: Spectacular!! We thought we knew a few things about birds...
Summary: 5 Stars
My wife and I have a long and strong interest in birds, with two pet sparrows, other close bird associations, and hundreds of hours soaring with raptors, ravens, swifts, gulls, and pelicans, on our hang gliders and paragliders. Birds have been the main focus of Naomi's artwork. So we expected to enjoy the series but maybe not find a lot of new or surprising information. Wrong! Most of the content so far has been new to us, either species we had never heard of or at least a different angle on the ones we did know something about. After renting and watching half of the first DVD, we ordered the whole set. This will be one of the few that we will watch, and show to friends, over and over.
I can't speak directly for people who think they have no interest in birds, but that should be no deterrent. If you have any interest in the world around you, watch this video.
The videography is breathtaking; narration is great; pacing, story interest, and organization are nearly flawless. Factual, technical, or editing errors are few and trivial. As someone with a long interest and a lot of knowledge in aviation and aerodynamics, I can say that this program gets it right and gets it across in ways that intelligent lay people will grasp in ways that will give them a whole new way of seeing the world around them. I can only assume that the same level of care has been given to less familiar sub-topics. Getting specialized knowledge across to lay audiences without dumbing it down or losing accuracy is a rare and precious art: The Life of Birds is a masterpiece. Attenborough is a charming guide, fun to watch and hear, and not too intrusive. Occasional computer graphics and animations serve a good purpose and are not overdone. There's little or no annoying overdramatization - who needs that when the material is so engrossing and compelling on its own?
If video transfer quality on earlier DVDs or tapes was poor, that problem seems to have been solved. What we've seen is some of the most sparklingly clear video I can think of anywhere. About the only small gripe I have is that the menu navigation and links from one chapter to another are awkward and confusing. But that amounts to a minute or two of annoyance out of hours of pleasure.
One reviewer mentioned missing topics such as bird respiration. Well, it would be nice to cover everything known about birds, but even in 10 hours of video it simply can't be done. And some topics are probably a better fit for books, such as The Sibley Guide to Bird Life & Behavior.
We rented The Life of Birds with high expectations, and the program exceeded them in every imaginable way.
Movie Review: Best of the Bird Videos
Summary: 5 Stars
Having watched several bird videos lately (the dramatic documentaries March of the Penguins, Winged Migration, and Pale Male, as well as the fictionalized Fly Away Home), and having recently become aware of the variety of birds in our neighborhood, I finally got around to watching David Attenborough's excellent Life of Birds. As entertaining as all the other videos were, Life of Birds is by far the best of the flock.
As you begin to watch the series, it isn't long before you appreciate the amazing camera work, as well as the amount of patience involved in waiting for just the right shot. And with the amount of film that was shot, editing must have been a monumental chore as well. But what an incredible result. You get so close to the birds, and observe so intimately their behavior, that you may begin to grow pinfeathers.
I had never seen David Attenborough before watching Life of the Birds, though I was aware of his reputation. For the first episode or two, I thought he was a bit quirky, bouncing around as he talked, wearing funny hats in cold weather, popping up in every corner of the earth to catch birds in their native habitats. His enthusiasm is infectious, and it's fun to see him occasionally interacting with the birds - in one scene he actually helps steady a bird who loses its footing while running up a tree. He lounges among huge flocks of birds and the birds walk up to him as if to say "No need to worry, it's only David Attenborough." But Attenborough would not approve of anthropomorphizing the birds. He knows his science, and by the end of the ten-part series, you will too.
There are no extras on this three-disc set. However, in one of the later episodes there is a short section about the filming of the series. One cameraman spends all night in a precarious treehouse so that he can film his subjects at sunrise. There is a storm and lightning breaks off one of the brances of the tree the camerman is perched in, but fortunately not the critical branch. The shots he got in the morning were spectacular.
Movie Review: I'd still rate it a 5-star
Summary: 5 Stars
Even though there were some things I thought were missed, and even though there was something in every program that mildly annoyed me. With nothing really comparable, I still believe this is worth the top rating, simply because of the labor of love David Attenborough put into it.
What were those things I didn't like? In "Life of Birds", with 5 minutes to go in every program, David would introduce the next program, but then would resume with the current program. This, to me, breaks the rhythm of the narrative and is not consistent with the style used in "Life of Mammals", where he would introduce the next program only at the very end of the current program. Maybe this difference in style also reflects the difference in time the two were created, "Life of Birds" seems to have been made much earlier, and it even shows in the inferior quality of some of the footage used. Each program in "Birds" also lasts 53 minutes, while those of "Mammals" last only 48. Those extra five minutes...
I also think there was not enough attention given to other crucial parts of birds' anatomy, like the unique respiratory system that allows them to cope with the oxygen demands of flight. Even the differences in "white muscle" of quail and red muscle of doves, for example, were not touched, and these would have given insight to why some birds are natural strong flyers while some are limited to short burts and spend their time mostly on the ground. Differences in talons and beaks, differences in wing shapes, IMO could have been better illustrated.
And in both "Birds" and "Mammals" I really can't understand why David Attenborough would go great lengths to show the rarest of species while ignoring the obvious: chickens, dogs, cats, cows and horses. Just because these animals are domesticated and common in the backyard doesn't mean they're not interesting.
And yeah, house cats are among the most destructive of bird predators. Maybe that's one reason for not showing house cats.
Movie Review: If you could only buy one Nature DVD...
Summary: 5 Stars
It would take something spectacular for me to watch a DVD for 10 hours straight... and this is. I laughed, I cried, I held my breath as 2 fighting hawks grasped talons in midair and spiraled down... would they realize that the ground was fast approaching? (Buy it and find out!) Think of this series as an amalgamation of fascinating facts about different species' behavior as it relates to their commonalities, such as nesting. Although no species is explored in depth, the vignettes are satisfying. (Although, I do want to know what happens to eggs that get buried completely and abandoned by their parents!) David Attenborough is his usual quirky self, appearing a few feet away from his subjects, and sometimes interacting with them. His confrontation with a territorial Scottish grouse is priceless. The birds themselves, aided by spectacular photography, are truly wonders. The shots of Lady Gould Finch and Zebra Finch nestlings' mouths were astonishing, and I doubt that people who raise them as pets have seen this. There's not too much nasty stuff here, although I know more now than I want to about coot parents and brown pelican siblings, and what we humans do to Diksissels in South America is heartbreaking. Kiwis to Kakapos, plovers to peacocks, they're all here. If you are a bird lover, you will see a few familiar scenes (the million flamingos in the lake, the male emperor penguins incubating eggs on their feet), so you find yourself watching for favorites... will they show the amazing artistry of the Bowerbird? Willwe see the Palm Cockatoo beating a log with a stick to declare his territory? I expected to see California Condors as the final bit (the subject is conservation) but instead got a delightful scene with a human caretaker flying his ultralight plane with his flock of Whoopers and Sandhill Cranes. Give yourself (and your loved ones) a treat and buy this DVD!