Review – The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

Oh, so close! Filmmaker Judy Irving makes it almost all the way to the end of this wildlife documentary without showing the violent death of any of her subjects. That shot of Connor dying was an automatic one-star deduction. Otherwise, however, this is a charming little movie about a colony of parrots that live in the wild in a neighborhood in San Francisco. Or to be more precise, this is a movie about Mark Bittner, a man obsessed with the birds. He has names for many of them, feeds them all and cares for the sick and injured. So during the course of the show we learn as much about Bittner as we do about the parrots he loves. Though Irving does a solid job capturing Bittner’s emotions, the best parts of the production are still those devoted to the birds themselves. I haven’t any particular interest in parrots, but I did find myself fascinated by the development of these non-native animals in an urban environment. Mildly amusing