Birds of a Feather (1931) is basically an 8-minute nature fever dream

Is this worth your eight minutes?

If you like old cartoons where everything moves to the beat of the music, yes. You should watch it if you find old-school hand-drawn animation cozy or if you just want to see a bunch of birds acting like weirdos.

You will probably hate this if you need a story with actual dialogue. It is literally just birds doing bird things until a hawk shows up and ruins the vibe.

I found myself staring at the swan at the beginning for way too long. The way it moves its neck is so smooth for 1931, it’s almost distracting. 🦢

Then there is this peacock. It is in black and white, so you can't see the colors, but the animators clearly worked really hard on the patterns on the feathers.

A duck swims by and just laughs at the peacock. It’s such a small, mean moment but it made me laugh. 🦆

The whole thing feels like a warm-up for the big features Disney would do later. It reminded me a bit of the lightheartedness in The Gold Rush, even though that’s a totally different kind of movie.

There is a woodpecker that goes after a caterpillar. The caterpillar is surprisingly fast? 🐛

It does that classic cartoon thing where the caterpillar's body stretches out like a rubber band. I think I’ve seen this exact gag in fifty other shorts, but it still works here.

Then we get to the owls. They are all lined up on a branch. 🦉

They start singing or crooning, and their eyes are huge. It’s a little bit creepy if you look at it for too long, honestly.

One owl has a deeper voice than the others. It’s those little details that make you realize someone actually cared about this silly little project.

The middle part with the chicken is where I started to get annoyed at the characters. She is just digging for worms and totally ignoring her babies. 🐥

She’s a pretty bad mom, if we are being real. She finds a worm and just eats it herself while the chicks are just wandering around in the tall grass.

Then the hawk shows up. The music gets all scary and dark. 🦅

The hawk grabs a chick, and for a second, it feels way too intense for a kids' cartoon. Like, the stakes just jumped from zero to a hundred in five seconds.

But then the crows show up. They don't just fly; they form a squadron.

It looks like a war movie all of a sudden. They dive-bomb the hawk like they are flying spitfires in a dogfight.

The way the crows organize themselves is actually pretty cool to watch. They move in these perfect lines and circles.

I wonder if people in 1931 thought this was the peak of action cinema. It’s definitely more exciting than some of the slow parts in Children of Dreams.

Eventually, they save the chick, and everyone goes back to being happy. It ends very abruptly, which I kind of liked.

No long goodbye, just *poof*, it’s over. 🎬

The sound quality is a bit fuzzy, which is expected for something nearly 100 years old. You can hear the hiss of the old film strip if you wear headphones.

I noticed one of the crows misses a frame during the dive. It just flickers for a split second. 🐦‍⬛

Most people wouldn't notice, but once you see it, you can't un-see it. It makes it feel more human, though.

It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a nice way to spend a few minutes if you're bored. It’s way more interesting than Rose-Marie if you ask me, mostly because things actually happen.

The ending where the chicken finally notices her kids is kind of sweet, I guess. Even if she was a jerk for most of the runtime.

Anyway, it’s a solid little piece of history. Watch it for the crows, stay for the mean duck. ✌️

Random thoughts I had while watching:

• Why are the owls so synchronized? It’s spooky.
• The caterpillar deserved to escape.
• The hawk's face is drawn much more realistically than the other birds.
• I wish I could see the peacock in color.