By now, if you’re a birder, you have probably been asked whether you’ve watched the movie “LISTERS” on YouTube. And I’d wager there’s a good chance you’re one of the 1.4 million viewers as of this writing that has indeed seen the documentary. Not since the movie adaptation of “The Big Year” by Mark Obmascik came to the big screen in 2011 has there been so much light shed on our shared passion in pop culture. Whereas the film of the same name used star power and a big budget in a largely underwhelming endeavor to introduce non-birders to the world of birding, “LISTERS” is an intentionally low-budget attempt to do the same that succeeds beautifully (and, perhaps, unapologetically).
The film follows the Reiser brothers, Owen and Quentin, as they embark on a Lower-48 Big Year in 2024, meaning they’re trying to see as many species of birds as possible from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 in the contiguous United States. The catch is that neither of them really know anything—at all—about birds. What follows is a tongue-in-cheek, cynical, irreverent, and hilarious exposé of North American birding culture that transitions from an outsider’s perspective to more of an insider’s look as their Big Year progresses. And they accomplish it all by spending nights in their Kia Sedona minivan parked in front of a Cracker Barrel or some other publicly available overnight car-camping location.
At its heart, the film feels very much like a bird-oriented road-tripping adventure across the United States and is reminiscent of the vibes one gets when reading “Kingbird Highway,” which chronicles Kenn Kaufman’s famous Big Year in 1973. But add in a healthy dose of profanity, drug use, and other adult content and you’ll understand why some viewers are finding this has more in common with the film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
Birders will recognize the usual jokes about inappropriate-sounding common names, off-putting birding locations (e.g. garbage dumps, wastewater ponds), and the “art” of pishing; these things continue to be amusing to non-birders (or at least they were to our two non-birding friends who watched the film with my wife and me). The locations they visit are likewise canon to anyone who has pursued birds in North America; shout-out to Sax-Zim Bog, and to Sparky Stensaas who they interviewed twice in the film. And the concept of listing itself is, of course, very familiar to birders.
But how this documentary excels is in taking the temperature of the modern birding era and identifying what role listing plays in it. The brothers interview David and Tammy McQuade, who regale them with tales of their travels throughout the United States as they seek record-breaking Big Years as well as the highest all-time number of birds photographed in the country; their privilege in having both the time and money to do so comes off as a foil to the brothers’ minimalistic approach. They meet a young birder named Ezekiel who is also conducting a Big Year, who smiles and laughs when he replies “No” to Owen’s question of whether he would still go birding if eBird didn’t exist. This aspect of the pursuit clearly was not anticipated by the brothers as they began their quest at the beginning of 2024, but nonetheless infiltrated their attempt throughout the year. Competitiveness is obviously not new to birding, but it has been facilitated by tools like eBird in such a way that birding has arguably become more gamified than it ever has been. The brothers interview Minnesota’s own Hannah Toutonghi on this point, who rhetorically asks: “What does that do for birds?”
By early fall, the brothers are getting tired not just of the day-after-day pursuit of new birds in new places but also the peer-induced pressure to continue on to the next one. When they realize that they aren’t going to see every bird and that they’re not going to be at (or even near) the top of the leaderboard at the end of the year, it’s a reprieve for viewers to see them taking a more “leisurely” excursion to enjoy an airboat ride in coastal southern Florida to observe a flock of American Flamingos at close range, a personal experience that has a profound effect on both brothers. They seem to slow down a bit toward the end of the year, but their persistence lands them a respectable 579 species for their 2024 Big Year.
In an increasingly digitized and rapidly changing world in which we know our birds face major population declines, continuing loss of habitat, and extirpations and extinctions, birders are overdue for a moment of reflection as we continue to flow with the same current. A moment when we can look in the mirror and not only laugh at the absurdity of our shared passion but also ask whether we’re doing it for the birds we claim to love. Perhaps “LISTERS” affords us that moment.
Bob Dunlap is a past president of the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union (MOU) and the current chair of its Records Committee. The following article is reprinted with permission from the MOU; it was originally published in the November-December issue of Minnesota Birding, Volume 62 Number 6.
Editor’s Note: As of this week, “LISTERS” has been viewed a total of 2.5 million times.