What am I watching?

If I watch something that compels me enough to log all the way into my website and write about it, it has my personal guarantee that’s it’s good!

By pure coincidence, I was relaxing on a bench in a park after a race when I saw a guy with a gigantic camera. I asked him if he got any good photos of the race and he said no. He said he was taking photos of birds. Ah! A birder! I asked him if he had that app that tracks which birds he has seen, and he confirmed he did. That’s about the only thing I knew about “birding”. Later that day, a documentary movie popped up in my feed about birding. I know our devices are listening to us, but this is the part where I say it was a magical coincidence instead. Even though I love documentaries, on any other day, I probably would have skipped past this one, but because of my earlier encounter, I felt like the universe was telling me to watch it and I’m glad it did! Listers is a must-see, quirky, charming, homemade documentary about two brothers on a mission to spot the most birds in a year – the list. To make it more challenging, they know zero birds on day one, and they have no money so they sleep in their car as they travel the country for a year, they film everything and it turns out they are remarkable nature photographers. The bird footage is award-worthy, but the rest of the film has the vibe of a shaky punk skate video. They constantly mock birdwatching and the obsessiveness of listers, while they become deeply obsessed themselves. This is not about birds; it’s about extreme bird-watchers, and it’s funny, entertaining, two hours is a master class in obsession and what is possible to learn in one year. This doc has a lot of heart. Listers is streaming free on YouTube at this link: https://youtu.be/zl-wAqplQAo?si=JuhfyK-zydbOPcdb