And with that, the June Swoon 5 is underway.

The June Swoon kicked off this year with a documentary that I watched for free on YouTube that I had heard about from film critic William Bibbiani. He had it as one of his favorite movies from 2025, which sounded strange considering it was a documentary about birdwatching.

I tell you what…this thing was one of the most entertaining documentaries I have seen in quite a while. I found myself engaged and laughing loudly multiple times throughout the nearly two hour run time.

Two brothers, Owen and Quentin Reiser, with zero birdwatching experience, decided to attempt a “Big Year” by traveling across the USA in a Kia minivan and listing as many species of birds that they could see.

A “Big Year” is a competitive birding challenge to spot as many bird species as possible across the Lower 48 United States in a single calendar year.

During the year, the Reiser brothers met many other birdwatchers along the way and these people were every bit as engaging as the birds that they were following.

Another major aspect of fun in this doc was the inexperience and the reactions of these two men. Their observations were hilarious which came from a place of unfamiliarity.

Several “listers,” which referred to a group of highly competitive birdwatchers who compile a list of the number of species that they see in a calendar year, trying to break the record of bird species seen, appeared on the documentary as Owen and Quentin came across them on their travels.

Some of these included Tammy and David McQuade, a married couple who recorded 700+ sightings in multiple consecutive years, and Ezekiel Dobson, a 19-year old who broke the record of birdwatching with 758 recorded sightings in 2024.

The unconventional manner that they undertook was one of the most enduring parts of the doc. They spoke about things like eBird, an app that helped identify birds, how Cracker Barrel would allow them to sleep in their parking lot for free, and the advantages and disadvantages of playback, recorded sounds of birds intended to attract the birds. It reminded me a lot of the old Squatch calls from Finding Bigfoot.

The Reisers planned on spending as little money as they could, so they even went as far as attempting to build their own boats, to varying degrees of success.

This had no right to be as entertaining as it was, bit Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching was a great film to kick off the fifth annual June Swoon.