The Life of Birds is another excellent documentary series from Sir David Attenborough who began his career at the BBC over 25 years ago. In 1979, he hosted Life on Earth which many consider to be the best wildlife documentary series ever created, and his recent shows have been nothing short of spectacular. Attenborough and his team spent 3 years, and $15 million, to gather the material for the show, and the outcome is wonderful. Attenborough travelled 256,000 miles (10 times around the earth), and the crew filmed in 42 countries, on 5 continents. The series is aptly titled, since it truly does explore "the life of birds." It covers every aspect of a bird's life, right from the egg, to parenthood, and even death. The show takes a look at flightless birds, meat eaters, water birds, signals and songs, and mating. It's a comprehensive look at our feathered friends.
My first experience with an Attenborough series was The Blue Planet (2000) which was released on DVD in 2002. The Life of Birds, which was filmed in 1998, but not released on DVD until after The Blue Planet, went unnoticed by me until after I had watched 2003's The Life of Mammals. While The Life of Birds is a great series, my expectations were raised because of the quality of The Blue Planet and The Life of Mammals and I was slightly disappointed.
Video
The Life of Birds was created pre-HDTV, so unlike The Blue Planet and The Life of Mammals, the series is presented in 4:3, not 16:9. The image is quite rough compared to the other two shows, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the quality. The image is grainy and contains a lot of edge enhancement. I found the first disc (which contains 4 programs while the others contain 3) was the worst looking, while the image was slightly improved for the last 6 episodes. To be honest, I had high expectations before watching this, and I was also unaware of the time frame the show was created. I assumed it was created after The Blue Planet due to its DVD release date, so I was surprised to see it in 4:3.
Audio
BBC documentaries and outstanding scores go hand in hand. I loved the music for this series, and the rest of the audio. It's a 2.0 stereo track that sounds wonderful. Ambient sounds can be heard form the left and right speakers, as well as the rears. Attenborough's voice is perfect for narrating a show like this, and can be clearly heard through the center channel. I've often wondered how much audio mixing is done for a series like this. Are these the real sounds the birds make, or are they mixed in an editing room at the BBC? There aren't subtitles for the series, but each episode is closed captioned.
While no extras are listed on the packaging, each episode seems to have a bit of material tagged onto the end. This material gives us a glimpse into how a certain shot was achieved, or something else about the production. I decided to award 1 point because of this.
Summary
Although the video quality is less than I was expecting, the series wasn't. Every time I sit down to watch an Attenborough production I'm left with a sense of awe. Each of the three series' I have watched (The Blue Planet, The Life of Birds and The Life of Mammals) have changed the way I look at nature. It's amazing how much information is in these 10 episodes.
If you haven't already done so, think about picking this set up. The video quality isn't superb, but at least you'll know what to expect before you sit down to watch this. I'd recommend the series for the content alone.
