I thought, 'What if I were 17, and it was my small town of Springhill, Louisiana? How would I feel if people started flooding in to see some bird?'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.
The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills and woods, and therefore full of birds.
It would probably surprise people to know that I'm interested in wildlife. I read a lot of poetry, too.
In New York, you have the street; in the U.K., we have the beach. I end up being like a migrating bird, being attracted to it.
I could have probably raised them in L.A. and they would have been great and had so many things at their fingertips and been exposed to so many things. But we travel a lot, so I don't think that moving out of town is sheltering the girls at all. Maybe protecting them a little bit more, trying to prolong their youth.
When I first came to New York, I would scream like a girl and run to the other side of the street if there was a pigeon. Now I can face off with a pigeon.
The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I was decidedly urban and knew little about native fauna, other than the handful of birds I saw on trips to the beach or Sunday walks.
Flying over New Orleans on our approach, I got it. There was no view of land without water - water in the great looming form of Lake Pontchartrain, water cutting through in tributaries, water flowing beside a long stretch of highway, water just - everywhere.
We filmed one scene on the beach and there was definitely weird energy around, and we were followed around by a white owl to several different locations, and little things like that, or certain mishaps would happen and you'd have to wonder what that was about.
I grew up in the Northeast; I've seen hurricanes before and trees down and cars destroyed.