BIRDS OF AMERICA

how birds can save us

BIRDS OF AMERICA:

How Birds Save Us

a film & conservation mission

by Matt Aeberhard

Birds of America is an ambitious, urgent undertaking: a feature film about the birds entangled in our lives and fate, and a parallel “making-of” media project that provides a potent, engaging platform for conservation messaging.

Let us attend to birds: their fundamental right to co-exist with us; their resilience and complex sentience;

their meaning to us not just as projections of human hope but as harbingers of our own, imminent existential challenges;

their mystery and self-sufficiency;

their invisible kingdoms.


saving birds teaches us

to save ourselves.

the film

Filmed and directed by Matt Aeberhard, one of the world’s leading wildlife cinematographers and a passionate birder, Birds of America: How Birds Save Us illuminates our birds’ struggle, success and failure as they navigate the human-dominated world: our warming seas, our remnant wilderness, our suburbs and cities, our industrial farms.  Dependent on ancient instincts, our birds offer us a stark warning of our own future if we fail to adapt to the juggernaut of change.


The human-entangled stories of the Whimbrel, the Northern Gannet, the Greater Prairie Chicken, the Whip-poor-will, the Cahow, the Saltmarsh Sparrow, the Peregrine and the Ivory Gull give us a definitive line in the sand:  we must recognize the threats to our birds that are accelerating at a terrifying rate due to habitat loss and climate change.  Compelling, informative, powerfully cinematic, Birds of America: How Birds Save Us reaches out to birders and non-birders urging us to act with every tool at our disposal.


Birds of America: How Birds Save Us is more than just a wildlife film. Along the way, we are partnering with leading conservation and research organizations. Making use of the filmed elements to inform and inspire, policy-makers and local stakeholders are poised to make meaningful change on the ground.


And through our own filmmaking process, we hope to bring you along as one of these stakeholders, too.

ABOUT MATT

the film

Filmed and directed by Matt Aeberhard, one of the world’s leading wildlife cinematographers and a passionate birder, Birds of America illuminates our birds’ struggle, success and failure as they navigate the Anthropocene: our warming seas, our remnant wilderness, our suburbs and cities, our industrial farms.  Dependent on ancient instincts, our birds offer us a stark warning of our own future if we fail to adapt to the juggernaut of change.


The human-entangled stories of the Whimbrel, the Gannet, the Prairie Chicken, the Whip-poor-will, the Cahow, the Saltmarsh Sparrow, the Peregrine and the Ivory Gull give us a definitive line in the sand:  we must recognize the threats to our birds that are accelerating at a terrifying rate due to habitat loss and climate change.  Compelling, informative, powerfully cinematic, Birds of America reaches out to birders and non-birders urging us to act urgently with every tool at our disposal.

ABOUT MATT

Birds of America is a part of the Tiny Seed Collective and is fiscally sponsored by Tiny Seed Project Inc. 501(c)3. Your donation is tax-deductible.

conservation

building an engaged, action-oriented film community

We know audiences love the “making of” elements of wildlife films. These glimpses provide a connection between the filmmaker and the viewer: filming these incredible birds becomes a shared, intimate experience.


Opening the doors to our endeavor as it unfolds will not only build viewership, but also create deeper collaboration—and actions— within a growing community.


Behind-the-scenes vlogs will regularly be released throughout the production featuring:


  • Matt’s technical, personal and practical filming challenges – remote locations, weather and rarity.
  • Conservation stories created with partners to highlight specific initiatives.
  • Matt’s engagement with activists from multiple disciplines who are fighting for birds and bird habitat.
  • Mentoring by Matt to inspire and educate a new generation of wildlife filmmakers responding

to new challenges.

building an engaged, action-oriented film community

We know how much audiences love the “making of” elements in wildlife films. Instead of leaving these

on the end of the film as an after-thought, we’re using them as an opportunity – a back-stage pass to

the filmmaking process as we film to build viewership.

These behind the scenes/behind the blind vlogs

will be regularly dropped during production and feature:

  • Matt’s technical, personal and practical challenges filming birds in remote locations and terrible

weather.

  • Conservation stories, freshly presented from Matt’s perspective.
  • Matt’s engagement with activists from multiple disciplines who are fighting for birds and bird habitat.
  • Mentoring opportunities for Matt to inspire and educate a new generation of wildlife filmmakers responding to new challenges.

our

mission

Through the potent medium of film and the magnificent avatars of our birds, Birds of America: How Birds Save Us will inspire individuals and organizations to use their power for positive, restorative, meaningful and undaunted action in the face of climate change and habitat loss.

Through our themes, stories and media outreach, we aim to:

 

promote a wilder, more bio-diverse aesthetic; expand the birding community to include people who’ve never considered birds important – or never considered them at all;


broaden support for birds and bring people unexpected joy;


ignite individual action;

 

support the initiatives of conservation organizations that conserve and expand habitat;

 

encourage the rewilding of highways, schools, public and contiguous private spaces;

 

and educate us about pesticides, insecticides, water and light pollution.

our

goals

BASTION: The Northern Gannet

This once endangered bird thrives because of a remote, protected reserve; yet such “fortress conservation” is increasingly challenged by the ubiquity of climate change.

DESTINY: The Greater Prairie Chicken

The Greater Prairie Chicken’s predicted functional extinction is a direct result of the on-going, wholesale destruction of Western landscapes – and our preference for its romantic mythology.

AESTHETIC: The Whip-poor-will

The tidying of nature, as a practice and ideology rooted in the development of our post-War suburbs, has resulted in pathological, national “lawnification” now endangering species like the Whip-poor-will that prefer “messy” habitat.

RESILIENCE: The Whimbrel

Pure human greed nearly put an end to the Whimbrel; collective, bi-partisan laws like the Migratory Bird Act and preservation of key migratory staging areas are powerful acts of reparation that ensure their present persistence.

MARGINS: The Salt Marsh Sparrow

The plain Saltmarsh Sparrow is a canary in the coal mine of climate change: the steady rise in sea-water level is drowning young chicks and pushing the species towards extinction. Even as our own “coastal habitat” of condos and golf course is under increasingly obvious, measurable threat, we continue to and build (and rebuild).

MYSTERY: The Cahow

300 years ago the Cahow, or Bermuda Petrel,  was believed exterminated by Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. Then, in 1951, 8 pairs were found on rocky Bermudan outcrop by a local boy. Seabirds are particularly elusive to us: albatrosses, shearwaters, terns represent the sublime and ineffable.

ADAPTATION: The Peregrine Falcon

We laud the success of the Peregrine Falcon in adapting to cityscapes but ignore the millions of migrating songbirds dying in window strikes. Environmental changes are now occurring so quickly that most species’ adaptions – developed over deep time - cannot possibly keep up.

OBLIVION: The Ivory Gull

Living in complete isolation from humans, this elusive Arctic traveler has been neither adequately filmed nor studied and is bound to the same fate of starvation as the polar bear. As the pack ice melts, we watch, with the terrible scientific omniscience, this exquisite, wild white bird vanish into oblivion.

REPARATION:

Fire blasts through a western forest. Houses explode into flame. What is our adaptive response to this? Do we rebuild in the same place? Or do we shape a new Manifest Destiny for all the gorgeous, complex life entangled in this same net of time and place?

The Bird Stories

BASTION: The Northern Gannet

This once endangered bird thrives because of a remote, protected reserve; yet such “fortress conservation” is increasingly challenged by the ubiquity of climate change.

DESTINY: The Greater Prairie Chicken

The Greater Prairie Chicken’s predicted functional extinction is a direct result of the on-going, wholesale destruction of Midwestern landscapes – and our preference for its romantic mythology.

AESTHETIC: The Whip-poor-will

The tidying of nature, as a practice and ideology rooted in the development of our post-War suburbs, has resulted in pathological, national “lawnification” now endangering species like the Whip-poor-will that prefer “messy” habitat.

RESILIENCE: The Whimbrel

Pure human greed nearly put an end to the Whimbrel; collective, bi-partisan laws like the Migratory Bird Act and preservation of key migratory staging areas are powerful acts of reparation that ensure their present persistence.

MARGINS: The Saltmarsh Sparrow

The plain Saltmarsh Sparrow is a canary in the coal mine of climate change: the steady rise in sea-water level is drowning young chicks and pushing the species towards extinction. Even as our own “coastal habitat” of condos and golf courses is under increasingly obvious, measurable threat, we continue to and build (and rebuild).

MYSTERY: The Cahow

300 years ago the Cahow, or Bermuda Petrel, was believed exterminated by Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. Then, in 1951, 8 pairs were found on rocky Bermudan outcrop by a local boy. Seabirds are particularly elusive to us: albatrosses, shearwaters, terns represent the sublime and ineffable.

ADAPTATION: The Peregrine Falcon

We laud the success of the Peregrine Falcon in adapting to cityscapes but ignore the millions of migrating songbirds dying in window strikes. Environmental changes are now occurring so quickly that most species’ adaptions – developed over deep time - cannot possibly keep up. Including Homo sapiens.

OBLIVION: The Ivory Gull

Living in complete isolation from humans, this elusive Arctic traveler has been neither adequately filmed nor studied and is bound to the same fate of starvation as the polar bear. As the pack ice melts, we watch with terrible scientific omniscience, this exquisite wild white bird vanish into oblivion.

REPARATION:

Fire blasts through a western forest. Houses explode into flame. What is our adaptive response to this? Do we rebuild in the same place? Or do we shape a new Manifest Destiny for all the gorgeous, complex life entangled in this same net of time and place?

Birdstory at The Tiny Seed Project

BASTION: The Northern Gannet

This once endangered bird thrives because of a remote, protected reserve; yet such “fortress conservation” is increasingly challenged by the ubiquity of climate change.

DESTINY: The Greater Prairie Chicken

The Greater Prairie Chicken’s predicted functional extinction is a direct result of the on-going, wholesale destruction of Western landscapes – and our preference for its romantic mythology.

AESTHETIC: The Whip-poor-will

The tidying of nature, as a practice and ideology rooted in the development of our post-War suburbs, has resulted in pathological, national “lawnification” now endangering species like the Whip-poor-will that prefer “messy” habitat.

RESILIENCE: The Whimbrel

Pure human greed nearly put an end to the Whimbrel; collective, bi-partisan laws like the Migratory Bird Act and preservation of key migratory staging areas are powerful acts of reparation that ensure their present persistence.

MARGINS: The Salt Marsh Sparrow

The plain Saltmarsh Sparrow is a canary in the coal mine of climate change: the steady rise in sea-water level is drowning young chicks and pushing the species towards extinction. Even as our own “coastal habitat” of condos and golf course is under increasingly obvious, measurable threat, we continue to and build (and rebuild).

MYSTERY: The Cahow

300 years ago the Cahow, or Bermuda Petrel, was believed exterminated by Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. Then, in 1951, 8 pairs were found on rocky Bermudan outcrop by a local boy. Seabirds are particularly elusive to us: albatrosses, shearwaters, terns represent the sublime and ineffable.

ADAPTATION: The Peregrine Falcon

We laud the success of the Peregrine Falcon in adapting to cityscapes but ignore the millions of migrating songbirds dying in window strikes. Environmental changes are now occurring so quickly that most species’ adaptions – developed over deep time - cannot possibly keep up.

OBLIVION: The Ivory Gull

Living in complete isolation from humans, this elusive Arctic traveler has been neither adequately filmed nor studied and is bound to the same fate of starvation as the polar bear. As the pack ice melts, we watch, with the terrible scientific omniscience, this exquisite, wild white bird vanish into oblivion.

REPARATION:

Fire blasts through a western forest. Houses explode into flame. What is our adaptive response to this? Do we rebuild in the same place? Or do we shape a new Manifest Destiny for all the gorgeous, complex life entangled in this same net of time and place?

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