The best birding movies: 12 films and documentaries about birders and birds, ranked

The best birding movies are The Big Year (2011), the comedy with Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson; Listers (2025), a documentary about two brothers' Big Year that's free on YouTube; and Birders: The Central Park Effect (2012). For films about birds rather than birders, critics rate All That Breathes and Winged Migration highest.

A birder is someone who goes out to find and name wild birds, and many keep a list of every species they've seen. We ranked films about birders first, then films about birds, weighing what critics and birding writers said and how easy each is to find in the US. Twelve more films follow the ranking.

The best birding movies at a glance

Rotten Tomatoes: the share of critics' reviews that are positive, read October 22, 2026 (a dash: none we could confirm). Where to watch: JustWatch's US listings as we read them on October 22, 2026, apart from Listers (Wikipedia). Streaming deals change often, so check before movie night.

What is the best movie about birding?

The best-known birding movie is The Big Year, a Hollywood comedy about a real kind of birding race. For a true story, watch Listers, which follows a real Big Year and costs nothing. For accuracy, Audubon's Birdist columnist Nicholas Lund named A Birder's Guide to Everything the most accurate birding film he knew of, in 2017.

The best birding movies, ranked

1. The Big Year (2011)

Comedy · directed by David Frankel · 100 minutes · rated PG

Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson play three men racing through a Big Year: a birder's challenge to see or hear as many species as possible between January 1 and December 31. Critics were cool, and only 41% of the 100 reviews Rotten Tomatoes counted were positive. Birding writers were kinder: Lund called it fun and family-friendly, even as he listed its bird mistakes. Our guide to The Big Year movie has the cast, the real 1998 race and where it was filmed.

2. Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching (2025)

Documentary · directed by Owen Reiser · 119 minutes

Owen and Quentin Reiser knew nothing about birds when they set off on a Big Year of the Lower 48 states in 2024, Audubon reported. They lived out of a 2010 Kia Sedona bought for $4,500 and finished with 579 species after about 38,757 miles. The brothers put the film on YouTube free, with no ads, in August 2025, turned down distribution offers from Netflix, HBO and Amazon, and passed 3 million views by March 2026, Wikipedia notes. It's the nearest thing to a true-life The Big Year.

3. Birders: The Central Park Effect (2012)

Documentary · directed by Jeffrey Kimball · 61 minutes

It aired on HBO in July 2012, following the birders of New York's Central Park through the seasons as more than 100 species pass through. Among them are Starr Saphir, who had led bird walks there for more than 30 years and filled more than 80 notebooks, and the novelist Jonathan Franzen. Kimball is a birder himself, critic Peter Rainer noted, so the film never talks down to anyone. The end credits list the 117 species in it.

4. A Birder's Guide to Everything (2013)

Comedy-drama · directed by Rob Meyer · 86 minutes · rated PG-13

A teenage birder (Kodi Smit-McPhee) thinks he has seen a duck believed extinct and drags his friends on a road trip to prove it, just before his father remarries. Ben Kingsley plays a famous birder, and Lund spotted a cameo by the birding writer Kenn Kaufman. Of 23 reviews, 87% were positive. Its PG-13 (sex and drug references, language, brief partial nudity) makes it one for teenagers.

5. Winged Migration (2001)

Documentary · directed by Jacques Perrin with Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats · 85 minutes · rated G

A nearly wordless film of birds on migration, shot on all seven continents. Those close flying shots have a secret: the crew raised storks, pelicans and other birds from hatching, so they would imprint on people and fly beside cameras on ultralight planes, paragliders and balloons. It was nominated for the Oscar for best documentary feature, and 95% of 130 reviews were positive.

6. Fly Away Home (1996)

Family drama · directed by Carroll Ballard · 107 minutes · rated PG

Amy (Anna Paquin), 13, hatches a nest of abandoned goose eggs on her father's Ontario farm. The goslings take her for their mother, so her father (Jeff Daniels) teaches her to fly an ultralight and lead them south to a sanctuary in North Carolina. The story comes from Bill Lishman, who began training Canada Geese to follow his ultralight in 1986 and led their migration in 1993. Its cinematography earned an Oscar nomination; 87% of 46 reviews were positive.

7. March of the Penguins (2005)

Documentary · directed by Luc Jacquet · 80 minutes · rated G

Emperor penguins make their yearly trek across Antarctica to breed, with Morgan Freeman reading the English narration. It won the Oscar for best documentary feature in March 2006, took about $127 million worldwide, and 94% of 181 reviews were positive. The catch: as of October 22, 2026, it isn't streaming in the US, only on DVD and Blu-ray.

8. Ghost Bird (2009)

Documentary · directed by Scott Crocker · 85 minutes

In 2005, the US Secretary of the Interior and a director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, feared extinct, had been found along the Cache River near Brinkley, Arkansas. Ghost Bird follows what came next: the science, the skeptics, and a small town that embraced the news with tourism and merchandise. Jerome A. Jackson, an ivory-bill expert who appears in it as a skeptic, reviewed it in PLOS Biology and praised how it shows science at work. For where the bird stands now, see Audubon's birds, then and now.

9. Birders (2019)

Short documentary · directed by Otilia Portillo Padua · 37 minutes

On Netflix since September 25, 2019, it follows birders and conservationists on both sides of the Rio Grande, from South Texas to Veracruz, during fall migration. It ends at a hawk watch, a lookout where people count birds of prey passing on migration, in Chichicaxtle, Veracruz. At under 40 minutes, it's an easy weeknight pick.

10. The Eagle Huntress (2016)

Documentary · directed by Otto Bell · 87 minutes · rated G

Aisholpan Nurgaiv, a 13-year-old Kazakh girl in Mongolia, trains with her father to hunt with a golden eagle, then enters the Golden Eagle Festival at Ölgii. Daisy Ridley narrates, and 94% of 125 reviews were positive. One caution: some researchers and reviewers say it exaggerates the opposition she faced, and the filmmakers corrected an early claim that she was the first Kazakh woman to hunt with an eagle.

11. All That Breathes (2022)

Documentary · directed by Shaunak Sen · 91 minutes

Two brothers in New Delhi, Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, treat black kites hurt by the city's polluted air; by 2023 they had saved more than 25,000 over 15 years, Democracy Now! reported. In 2022 it won the grand jury prize for world cinema documentaries at Sundance and the Golden Eye at Cannes, and it was nominated for an Oscar. Of 88 reviews, 99% were positive.

12. The Million Dollar Duck (2016)

Documentary · directed by Brian Golden Davis · 71 minutes

Wildlife painters compete in the Federal Duck Stamp Contest, the US government's own juried art contest, whose winning painting becomes the next stamp. Larry Jordan's review for the birding blog 10,000 Birds liked several of the artists but objected to a scene of ducks being flushed for reference photos. He also pointed out that the winner gets no cash prize.

What are some movies like The Big Year?

After Listers and A Birder's Guide to Everything, try four smaller films about birders: The Birder, Pelican Blood, The Hide and Rare Birds. Lund wrote about all four for Audubon.

• The Birder (2013, Ted Bezaire): Tom Cavanagh plays a birder who plots revenge after he's passed over for a job at the local park. Lund found it respectful of birders but loose with birds and birding terms. Free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel.
• Pelican Blood (2009, Karl Golden; premiered in 2010): a young British birder deals with love and depression, from Cris Freddi's novel, with Harry Treadaway. Lund praised its realistic birding and true-to-Britain birds. It's dark, so not for kids.
• The Hide (2008, Marek Losey): on the Suffolk mudflats, a birder who needs only the Sociable Plover to complete his British list is joined in his hide by a bloodied stranger.
• Rare Birds (2001, Sturla Gunnarsson): a struggling restaurant owner in Newfoundland fakes a rare-bird sighting; William Hurt stars. Lund found the plot silly but singled out a talk about telling woodpeckers apart.

What are the best birding documentaries?

The best documentaries about birders are Listers, Birders: The Central Park Effect and Ghost Bird; about birds, the best reviewed are All That Breathes, Winged Migration and March of the Penguins. Four more are worth finding:

• The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2003, Judy Irving): Mark Bittner and a wild San Francisco flock, mostly Cherry-headed Conures. Free on Kanopy and Hoopla.
• Pelican Dreams (2014, Judy Irving): a stray California Brown Pelican picked up on the Golden Gate Bridge, its rehab, and how pelicans nest and migrate. To rent on Amazon.
• The Messenger (2015, Su Rynard): a Canadian film about protecting the world's songbirds; it came third in the audience vote at the Hot Docs festival.
• The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos (2008, Matthew Aeberhard and Leander Ward): Disneynature's film of Lesser Flamingos raising their young at Lake Natron, Tanzania.

What are the best movies about birds that aren't about birding?

Ken Loach's Kes (1969) and H Is for Hawk (2025) are the most admired; Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) are the most famous.

• Kes (112 minutes): a struggling schoolboy in Barnsley, in the north of England, trains a kestrel. The BFI calls it the most widely admired of Loach's films.
• H Is for Hawk (Philippa Lowthorpe, 115 minutes, rated PG-13): Claire Foy plays Helen Macdonald in the film of her memoir of grief and of training a goshawk, Mabel; 82% of 104 reviews were positive. Prime Video, or free on Kanopy. The book is among the best bird books.
• Birdman of Alcatraz (John Frankenheimer): Burt Lancaster plays Robert Stroud, who kept canaries in Leavenworth prison and wrote a book on bird diseases. The twist: he was never allowed birds at Alcatraz. Four Oscar nominations.
• The Birds: shot partly in Bodega Bay, California. Most of the birds were real: the gulls were caught at a San Francisco garbage dump, and some of the "crows" were ravens.

Is The Big Year a true story?

Yes: The Big Year is based on Mark Obmascik's 2004 nonfiction book about a real 1998 race between three birders. The film renamed them and moved the race to the present day. Our guide to The Big Year's true story explains who they were and what the film changed.

Which birding movies are good for kids?

Three are rated G: Winged Migration, March of the Penguins and The Eagle Huntress; Fly Away Home and The Big Year are rated PG. A Birder's Guide to Everything and H Is for Hawk are PG-13, and The Birds is a horror film, so save those for older children. For a young birder, Fly Away Home has a bonus: its hero is 13 and leads the geese herself.

Where can I watch birding movies for free?

Start with Listers, free on YouTube with no ads; ten more in this guide stream free in the US. As JustWatch listed them on October 22, 2026:

• Free with ads: Winged Migration and The Eagle Huntress on YouTube; Fly Away Home on Tubi, YouTube and The Roku Channel; A Birder's Guide to Everything and The Birder on Tubi, Pluto TV and The Roku Channel.
• Free on Kanopy: Birders: The Central Park Effect, Ghost Bird, All That Breathes, H Is for Hawk and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

Are there birding movies on Netflix?

Yes: Birders (2019), a 37-minute documentary about birding along the US–Mexico border, streams on Netflix in the US. The Big Year streams on Disney+, not Netflix, and the makers of Listers turned down Netflix and kept their film free on YouTube.

Questions people ask

What is a Big Year?

A Big Year is an informal challenge: see or hear as many bird species as you can in one calendar year, in an area you choose. Our Big Year guide has the rules, the records and how to plan one.

What's the newest birding movie?

Of the films here, Listers (August 2025) is the newest about birders. H Is for Hawk premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2025; its main US release came in January 2026.

A list of your own

Most of these films are, at heart, about a list. If you keep one, a Birdfolio prints it as a hardcover book, with a classic painting beside every species: page through a Birdfolio.