'Birders: The Central Park Effect' review: Meet the migrators

He and others like him testify in HBO's splendid hour about their intimate encounters with little bits of magic on wings. Better yet, producer-director-photographer Jeffrey Kimball provides visual evidence, layering in hundreds of shots of birds both common and rare, as he walks us through the park's year in birds, from spring to the following spring.

We meet big-time birders, like senior citizen and birding guide extraordinaire Starr Saphir (yes, that's "star sapphire"), along with seasonal gawkers who savor each spring's feast of stopover migrators. We learn why those birds love Central Park and how they adapt to a human landscape dominated by skyscrapers.

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