Michael Male will show and discuss some of the bird behavior he has filmed in the last few years with Judy Fieth for Birdfilms. The selection will focus on shorebirds and waterfowl, but will also include samples from other groups. Much of the filming was done at high frame rates, to slow down motion and highlight details of feeding and courtship behaviors. Male is a cinematographer specializing in natural history subjects. In 1977 he worked with Helen Hays to make the film Ternwatch about the Great Gull Island project. It was Male’s senior thesis at the University of Connecticut. Since then he has contributed to David Attenborough’s nature series including Life of Birds, Life of Mammals, Life in Cold Blood, Blue Pintail, and Planet Earth. It was an off-the-cuff comment made by a Linnaean Society member—“you’ll never be able to film all the warblers”—that provided the challenge to keep Male and Fieth going for years, until they finally did.
