{"id":274791,"date":"2025-10-03T14:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T14:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/274791\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T14:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T14:45:11","slug":"las-birding-community-reacts-to-hallmarks-birder-romcom-they-really-blew-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/274791\/","title":{"rendered":"LA\u2019s birding community reacts to Hallmark\u2019s birder romcom: \u2018They really blew it\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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L.A. is home to both Hollywood and a passionate birding community \u2014 but the two don\u2019t always see eye to eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cBirders are always getting annoyed watching movies,\u201d said Marcos Trinidad, senior director of forestry at TreePeople and an avid birder. And that\u2019s because movies so often get bird facts wrong. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe classic example is how almost always when there is footage of a bald eagle, it\u2019s overlaid with the sound of a red-tailed hawk<\/a>,\u201d Trinidad said.<\/p>\n

And so it\u2019s not surprising that when the Hallmark Channel announced Adventures in Love & Birding with a poster on Instagram \u2014 their new rom-com about a single mother who falls in love with an avid birder \u2014 birders went off in the comments.<\/p>\n

One user wrote, \u201cI wonder what those two male varied thrushes are talking about \ud83d\ude02.\u201d Another, \u201cI hope they hired a location manager to ensure that they are showing correct birds in correct regions or the birding community is gonna go BONKERS.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was curious about how birders would react to the actual movie, so I reached out to local birders and tagged along to an Adventures in Love & Birding watch party to get reactions in real time.<\/p>\n

LA\u2019s birding community reacts to Hallmark\u2019s birder romcom: \u2018They really blew it\u2019<\/p>\n

Birders react<\/p>\n

On the first Saturday of fall, I went to avid birder Jamin Warren\u2019s house. He was hosting his friend Brett Karley, fellow avid birder and founder of Bird Club<\/a> \u2014 a sustainable clothing line for birders. The two are part of the LA Birding Community Chat Group, a WhatsApp group with over 200 members. They were meeting up to sip on beers and watch Adventures in Love & Birding.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Pretty immediately, the two picked up on aspects of birding that didn\u2019t ring true.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this guy’s like a real birder trying to be a guide, he would not have those binoculars,\u201d Karley said. \u201cThose binoculars are like Porro prisms. \u2026 They’re very old fashioned or very beginner level.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also thought some of the bird calls didn’t match the birds that were shown on screen: \u201cSo they played the trill of a screech owl, but that looks like a gray horn owl,\u201d Karley said.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the film’s biggest birding fumble, according to Karley and Warren, is that it failed to capture the excitement of spotting a bird you’ve wanted to see for a long time \u2014 which for a lot of birders is the greatest thrill of the hobby.<\/p>\n

The movie sets up that the male lead has always wanted to see a spotted owl, but when he finally does, it\u2019s anti-climactic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just stumble upon it and they weren’t pumped about it?!?\u201d said Karley. \u201cThey missed on all levels. They really blew it. I’d like to hear from [Hallmark] about that part.\u201d<\/p>\n

I reached out to the Hallmark Channel about the use of consultants or experts to address birding in the movie. They did not respond by deadline.<\/p>\n

Hallmark making moves into fall \u2014 and the increasingly popular world of birding<\/p>\n

Adventures in Love & Birding is part of the Hallmark Channel\u2019s expanding autumnal offerings, as the network tries to conquer larger audiences outside of their extremely popular \u201cCountdown to Christmas\u201d \u2014 a yearly fresh slate of Christmas-themed rom-coms.<\/p>\n

From a marketing perspective, it makes sense that Hallmark would want to tap into the birding community \u2014 it\u2019s a hobby that experienced a boom in the last five years.<\/p>\n

During the pandemic, bird-watching surged in popularity, as it was one of the only acceptable socially distanced activities.<\/p>\n

According to a 2022 survey from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service<\/a>, the estimated total number of birdwatchers more than doubled from the previous survey in 2016 \u2014 finding that around 96 million people in the U.S. engaged in birding.<\/p>\n

Bringing birding to the masses<\/p>\n

Despite its inaccuracies, Karley and Warren had fun watching Adventures in Love & Birding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciated that they went for a birding movie and that a lot of people are talking about it, so that it’s more in the public eye,\u201d Karley said.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, what Karley and Warren most care about is more people getting into the hobby and it not being seen as some eccentric marginal activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole thing now is making it more widespread and getting rid of the stigma that it’s like a bunch of unapproachable, antisocial people,\u201d Karley said.<\/p>\n

And, as Warren pointed out to me, birding is one of the hobbies where the more people who participate, the better it is for research and conservation. When birders report what they see in popular birding apps, actual scientists use that data to track bird populations.<\/p>\n

\u201cBirding is really interesting in that it’s a way that people can contribute to science in a meaningful way just by counting birds in their backyard,\u201d Warren said. \u201cThe more people that do this, the more they add to everyone’s individual experience by keeping an eye on their little patch and kind of adding collectively to the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keep up with LAist. If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":274792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[142219,46088,1582,276,142217,2961,224,142218,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-274791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-adventures-in-love-and-birding","9":"tag-birding","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-hallmark-movies","13":"tag-la","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-birders","16":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115310777049805127","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}