Adventures in Love & Birding: Movie Review

A genuine appreciation for birding with Hallmark’s typical romance.

Adventures in Love & Birding merges the perfect hobby with Hallmark’s romance and fall theme. While I’m not a birder myself, I appreciate birding, and I suspect many of Hallmark’s audience is either an avid birder themselves or at least an enjoyer from afar. Complete with some bird photography, bird puns and trivia, it’s a whole-hearted push on the hobby.		2025 Directed by: Michael Robison Screenplay by: Nicole Baxter, Sarah T. Dubb Starring: Andrew Walker, Rachel Boston
I’m a big fan when Hallmark goes for a niche activity and gets everything right, or at least enough details right, that it comes across as a genuine and honest appreciation. This shows respect to the audience and the characters, and the whole thing becomes that much easier to like. John (Andrew Walker) is a birder, he would be a professional birder if he quit his job and started his own bird tour guide company. Despite seeing John at work frequently, the film does not bother telling us what he does; it’s all meaningless vague corporate-speak, because that’s par for the course for these movies. Celeste (Rachel Boston) is a divorced, single mom who is a high school English teacher. We never actually see her at her job, unless her job consists entirely of coworkers gossiping about her love life. The backstory part of this movie, as well as the supporting actors, are not good. The enjoyment rests entirely on the leads and the birding competition. So fair warning for anybody who is not into birding at all. John’s ex has dumped him, presumably because he’s not competitive enough, since he was content with a masters and didn’t get his PhD in ornithology. It’s now the annual bird count competition and John needs a partner. A mutual friend introduces Celeste. Celeste doesn’t know much about birds but she is smart, compassionate and eager, so John agrees. Through a weird misunderstanding, Celeste thought it was a fake relationship, so then they were fake dating while being real birding partners. All romances need some sort of cliché gimmick, and in general fake dating to real love is much better than the enemies to lovers trope which is the more common route for Hallmark romances. That aspect is not particularly well written, but they do have the birding to fall back on. In one of my favourite scenes, Celeste shows up in this off-white outfit for the trivia game, as she says best to go for muted demure colours for the female. Meanwhile Andrew is wearing a purple shirt, and as he says he’s trying to attract a mate. Talk about the perfect pairing of bird metaphors in a romantic comedy. As is common for the genre, the romance is a mature, angst-free gradually falling in love as they get to know each other better. While most of the bird photography are the most common North American bird species, there is a spotted owl and a rare hummingbird, but there is still quite a few beautifully-photographed birds throughout the movie. And of course a dozen bird analogies. This really is a whole-hearted adventure in love & birding.