Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Extraordinary Birder With Christian Cooper’ On Nat Geo Wild, Where The Central Park Birder Travels The World To See Rare Birds

You folks remember Christian Cooper, right? In 2020, he was watching birds in Central Park when he asked a woman named Amy Cooper (no relation) to make sure her dog is on a leash. Amy Cooper, feeling threatened by Christian Cooper simply because he’s Black, says she’ll call the police on him. The video he shot of Amy Cooper being an extreme Karen went viral, right before George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, setting off the massive protests during the first summer of the pandemic. The 60-year-old Christian Cooper has been a birder for his whole life, and he now has a series where he travels the world to see how birds both rare and common interact with our world.

EXTRAORDINARY BIRDER WITH CHRISTIAN COOPER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see some birds flying off a power line and other scenes of birds. Then we see a muscular man with binoculars around his neck saying, “I’m Christian Cooper, and I’m a birder.”

The Gist: In the first episode, Cooper travels to Puerto Rico, home of the only rainforest in the U.S. national forest system. He goes to a sanctuary for Puerto Rican parrots, an threatened species that’s slowly being brought back via a program that raises and breeds the birds in captivity, then releases them in the wild when they’re ready. It’s a system that’s monitored closely, with radio transmitters attached to their necks and with fertilized eggs being added to nests in place of unfertilized ones. Cooper holds a baby parrot and jokes that their screeches are “as if a thousand little toddlers started tooting on little tin horns at the same time.”

Cooper then goes looking for a black swift, one of his “life birds.” It’s one of the birds he’s never seen but has on his mental checklist, and when he spots one in a nest behind a waterfall, he is ecstatic. He then kayaks to a remote spot and crosses a rope bridge to see a Puerto Rican toady, a tiny bird with a ton of attitude. He goes on the water to talk to a man who has devoted his life to saving the habitat of the pelicans who inhabit the shoreline. Then he goes back to the parrot sanctuary to see seven parrots being released into the wild.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Extraordinary Birder With Christian Cooper is a pretty standard travel show format, a la shows like Taste The Nation or Parts Unknown.

Our Take: As much as the viral incident in 2020 made Christian Cooper famous, Nat Geo wouldn’t have given him a show if he didn’t show personality and enthusiasm. And in Extraordinary Birder, Cooper shows both. He’s alternately giddy and nerdy about what he’s seeing, using colorful metaphors whenever he can. In his voice overs he eruditely pronounces the locations in Puerto Rico with the right intonations and enunciation.

One thing he’s not, though, is pedantic. He brings viewers who may not be birders into his world, showing us why he’s been so fascinated with spotting different species for his entire life. He also explains why hobbyists are now called “birders” instead of “bird watchers” when he introduces us to a visually-impaired employee of a reserve who identifies species by their songs. It especially comes into play when he hears a limpkin, a species that had abandoned Puerto Rico but has come back now that the former sugar plantation Cooper visited is now a reserve.

What Age Group Is This For?: The series is definitely for all ages.

Parting Shot: As the credits roll, Cooper talks about the parrots, who are a symbol of how the island has rebuilt since it was devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Sleeper Star: We are constantly amazed at how the directors and cinematographers can find birds and nests that are extraordinarily hard for the naked eye to find.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I see pelicans more than my kids, so I must love pelicans,” says Roberto, who is trying to preserve nesting sites for the birds along a shoreline that’s constantly being developed.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Extraordinary Birder With Christian Cooper has an enthusiastic host who makes a formerly quiet and nichey hobby like birding into something that’s accessible to everyone.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.