anonymouse

This is going to be a very quick entry.

Winged Migration is a remarkable movie. It's aesthetically flawless, and my only nitpick with the movie is that the music kind of sucked. My mom agrees. I took my mom because she's a member of the Audobon society. She and I love birds. We have bird feeders in the backyard which we set up for a family of cardinals that were nesting in a shrubby little bush near the bottlebrush trees. When the eggs hatched, there were three baby birds, and we maintained our distance most of the time, but... Their mouths! They would open their beaks when we attempted a look at the nest, and oh man... So sweet.

Last week, my mom and I spent maybe a half hour watching a flock of falcons soar a block away from our house when we were out riding our bikes. That was pretty spectacular.

The movie itself is a labor of love. It took four years to shoot. For the first two years, they were just getting used to following the migratory flocks of birds, watching their patterns. Then they started shooting, and they have a little disclaimer at the beginning of the film that states that no trick photography was used except in two scenes where they used CGI to show what the migratory patterns of birds look like from space. The director, Jacques Perrin, asked if NASA could help them out, but I'm not sure if that was a joke. The rest of the movie, though? I can see why the caveat would be necessary. It almost doesn't look real. The cranes are so elegant, the way they walk and prance. Oh, and there are these birds in Oregon. They run on water! Literally! It's so cool. And the grouse... I love them all.

There are some parts of the movies where they show the perils of migration. One bird got stuck in oil, and it couldn't take flight. After the movie was over, he mentioned that they did rescue the bird. Some documentarians wouldn't interfere with nature because they're evil documentarians, and they suck. But they were following these birds for two years, and, well... I'm happy to hear that they helped the bird, but unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of pollution control in many countries, and

There was another scene, too, where there was a bird with an injured wing on some sand dunes. A bunch of scuttling sand crabs were stalking it, and the camera cut away to show the crabs covering something. It turns out it was a fish. They rescued that bird, too, and it's doing well now.

Then... there were scenes shot on hunting grounds. They didn't actually show ducks being shot, but it looked like the birds fell out of the sky because... That's what they do. They drop like they've been shot when they near the coast. I really, really don't like hunters. I know. I eat chicken and fish. I understand that it's wrong. I attempted to eat red meat when I was a little girl, but I couldn't because of the blood. That just squicked me out.

I could stop eating animals, but the birds won't stop eating fish. That doesn't make any sense, really.

In conclusion, if you enjoy nature at all, see this movie. It's beautiful. Majestic.

I'm stopping now because this entry isn't brief at all.