Saturday, July 13, 2013

For the Birds

Heidi has a thing about documentaries. "Why don't we see more of them?" she demands, and who can disagree? So this morning I navigated to our "on demand" feature and found a documentary short that seemed like it might be interesting.

Birders: The Central Park Effect did have a pretty good premise-- that in this age of decreasing woodlands, migrating birds are actually drawn to urban parks as travelers to rest stops and so the diversity of the avian population there is rather impressively wide.

I love identifying birds to begin with, and so I was initially on board. The addition of author Jonathan Franzen was an interesting plus, as was the terminally ill birder who continued to find meaning in life through birdwatching season after season. Ultimately, though, the film dragged a bit for me. Perhaps it was all the distractions of a Saturday morning; in any case, I found myself more interested in the newspaper and my iPad than the television.

Or, that was true until our cat, Penelope, became interested in the TV. All the bird calls and footage of darting, diving, and flying activated her feline instincts and soon she was sitting on a two inch ledge, whiskers flush to the flat screen.

Her pacing and frustrated mewing forced my attention back to the documentary, and hey! We gotta get those birds, those fabulous birds!

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