Add Me to the "Listers"

Hi loves,

I think it's been well-established by now that this is a strongly pro-birds blog.

It will therefore come as no surprise that when a fellow bird-loving friend strongly recommended a documentary about "extreme birdwatching", I leapt at the chance to gobble it up.

May I please have the immense pleasure of introducing to you: "Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching" (2025)?

"Listers" documents two brothers' endeavor to complete a "Big Year", which is evidently a challenge undertaken by avid birders to see as many discreet types of bird in the contiguous United States as possible in one calendar year.  

Our intrepid protagonists, Owen and Quentin Reiser, intersperse their amusing musings about life in a modified and falling-apart minivan, including their consumption of unholy amounts of marijuana and engagement in al fresco urination, with interviews with other bird obsessives/Big Year completers and their absolutely goddamned STUNNING footage of the birds they see.  I'm talking arrestingly beautiful, breathtaking, goosebumps-causing gorgeous images and slow-mo video of birds.

The brothers bring a disarming yet determined humility to this entire enterprise, acknowledging that they are new to their passion for birds.  Because they squarely refrain from the hubris of shooting for any kind of record in number-of-birds-seen-in-one-year, this only further demonstrates the sincerity and charm of their tenacity and single-mindedness in bird-seeking.

The resulting combination of these elements should be jarringly discordant, to the point that the film threatens to fall apart under the weight of its dramatic tonal shifts.  Instead, the Reiser brothers have created an engrossing, delightful, and singular movie that managed to be genuinely funny, profound, moving, and deeply memorable.  "Listers" is such a special and compelling movie it could convert even the most hardened ornithophobe.

And if you haven't had the good fortune of seeing it yet, you're in luck: it's free to watch on YouTube!

Likely unsurprisingly, I gave "Listers" a 5.

Happy birding!

{Heart}