Since the stated mission here is to fight ignorance, I will gently point out that they are called “Canada Geese”, not “Canadian geese”. If they were Canadian, we wouldn’t let them across the border without a strip search.
I first saw birds filmed this way at an IMAX-type 3D presentation at EXPO 86 in Vancouver. Even today, the images grab me and bring out the wonder of the natural world. I just want to be up there flying with them!
Ehhh…
Nice, but some flaws in my opinion.
The soundtrack was mostly obnoxious and the narrator, while not entirely bad, could have been given better things to say.
Microcosmos worked a lot better IMHO. I think that you’d lose a lot if you saw Winged Migration on video instead of on the big screen. Amazingly enough, this is not the case with Microcosmos. It is still quite cool even on the small screen.
I thought Microcosmos worked better. As a story, conceptually, and in other ways. In Winged Migration you are seeing stuff that you could observe yourself really. (At least where I live you can see Canada Geese and Bald Eagles and Herons pretty often). And you can see humans and their stuff quite a bit in Winged Migration which makes it clear to me that the scene is staged.
I liked it I guess, but it could have been much better.
I missed this on its Seattle run (I know, I’m kicking myself), partly because I was wrestling with whether my wife would like it or not. We both loved Microcosmos, and I think Winged Migration would be right up her alley, with the critical exception of the scene described.
For comparison, I showed her Baraka a couple of years ago, which she also enjoyed, except for that brief bit where the baby chicks are having their little beaks burned. :eek: I’d forgotten that bit, and it got a horrified exclamation, “Oh Jesus,” out of her.
So given what I’d heard about the crab attack, I went back and forth with myself: Do I take my wife, and lean over at the proper time and say, “I think you’ll want to go get popcorn right now,” or do I not take the risk and just see it myself? Since I never resolved the internal debate, I missed the movie. Now, of course, I’m having the same question re a home viewing.
So: How bad is the crab scene, really? How long is it? “Okay, sweetie, cover your eyes for seventy-five seconds, starting… now.” 
It was beautiful. I’ve run a marathon but I felt out of shape watching those birds. Can you imagine the patience to capture some of those shots? The narration was kind of sparse on info about the birds. I wanted to know more.
Nothing (other than a bird with a broken wing) explicit is shown, but a lot is implied. The final image in that sequence is the crabs all mobbing something but you can’t see what it is.