Dancing with the Birds (documentary) : Lighthearted hour from the people who brought you "Our Planet,"

Our Planet was and is an absolutely legendary nature documentary hosted by the king of nature programs, David Attenborough. I will watch anything that British documentary-maker Alastair Fothergill is involved in, and Dancing with the Birds is his latest.

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Just like all of his documentaries, Alastair Fothergill (among other people, of course) manages to put together stunning footage and then explain it to us in a condensed and easy-to-understand method. David Attenborough is absent from this one, but in his stead, legendary British comedian Stephen Fry took the helm and does a really wonderful job in the process.

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_{That looks like computer graphics, but is actually a real bird}

The show approaches just one aspect of nature: The bizarre mating rituals of several quite rare species of birds that only appear in certain parts of the globe. They are divided into multiple categories including Swingers (talking about actually swinging back and forth but could also apply to how male birds handle the mating process in a general sense), artists, teamsters(about how teams of birds work to get just one of their pals some action... literal wingmen,) and lastly The Greatest Showman.

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The animals themselves are stunning and captured in just the most amazing way that probably wasn't even possible until recently. I can't even imagine how much time must have went into capturing all of this footage - I would bet that there were a lot of failures and frustration before finally getting the clips they wanted. Birds are easy to spook, so it's not like they could just have a Hollywood camera crew sitting out there in the open.

One of my favorite segments involved this one species that fell into the artist category. The MacGregor’s bowerbird that they focused on had spent years building an impressive tower of twigs and spends all day, every day maintaining and improving it. This structure serves no purpose other than to impress female bowerbirds that might be flying by and think "oh wow, that's a good tower - maybe I'll check that dude out!"

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It was funny how particular the bowerbird was in having just the right stuff hanging off the end and at one point a competing male comes by when the our main man bird wasn't home and starts wrecking his creation. Competition is fierce for the ladies' attention!

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_{just beautiful!}

Now, one thing that I have to say and I hope this doesn't get me in trouble is that the male birds are all really lovely with bright colors and imaginative dances and art creations but the lady birds are just quite drab looking and they don't build anything nor do they have any dance moves.... Pfffft! seems a bit unfair doesn't it?

_{from the official Netflix channel}

I love documentaries anyway and nature documentaries made by the team that made this are second-to-none in the industry. Plus, the fact that the entire production is less than an hour long and is only one episode makes this a very low-commitment choice for viewing - but i bet you pay attention because it's funny, cute, looks great, and you also end up learning something at the end... All good things!

My overall rating?

_{I had to search a little while before I even found this documentary in the menu, but there is no good reason that I can think of why any country would be blocking nature content... it's likely in there (on Netflix, that is) so have a look. I don't think you'll regret it}