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Kestrel's Eye

Kestrel's Eye

List Price: $24.95
Your Price: $22.46
Product Info Reviews

Features:
  • Color


Description:

Most nature documentaries take the perspective of the intent human observer looking into the curious world of nature. The delightful Kestrel's Eye begins high in the air, looking down on the human world from a bird's eye view. Director-photographer Mikael Kristersson spent years filming a pair of handsome kestrels (European falcons) in the church tower of a small Swedish town. He captures their life of hunting, eating, grooming, mating, nesting, and raising a brood with astounding intimacy and little human intrusion. We watch the male hunt, hovering like a hummingbird before diving for a field mouse or a lizard, than take the kill to his mate. Two hidden cameras in their cave-like nest record the almost ritualistic details of nesting (a chore the male engages in, however briefly) and mothering the newly hatched chicks. There's no narration, only the chirps and clicks and fluttering wings of the birds and the ambiance of the human activity below. The amusing kestrel's-eye view of the odd activities of their human neighbors--weddings and funerals and the endless grooming of the cemetery below their nest--may be merely Kristersson's fancy but the birds seem genuinely amused by the curious spectacle. They cock an eye downward, bob and bounce to the oompah music of a passing parade, then return to their more immediate pursuit of survival. --Sean Axmaker
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