BFI

This film starts conventionally enough following a pair of great tits in a suburban garden. Starting in the winter time with the invitation of bit of fat on a string to encourage the birds to return to the garden, we see them establishing themselves in a nesting box cunningly constructed so that the camera can get an inside view of the hatching and development of the chicks. We watch them grow up. It is therefore a genuine shock when we see them leave the nest for the first time to try out their wings, fly to a branch and then lose their balance and drop off one by one. The mother bird looks increasingly bemused as she returns time and again to feed a rapidly diminishing brood - indeed she knocks one off herself. The jaw dropping awfulness continues until there is one solitary chick left.

The Monthly Film Bulletin felt obliged to include some advice for schools booking the film: "Young children will be relieved to hear that the parents continued to feed all their young ones and not only the few which kept their balance on the branch".

Bryony Dixon

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