Robert Reynolds This is an early Silly Symphonies short produced by Disney. Even though there isn't that much to this, there will be spoilers ahead:This may be the template for a plot-less cartoon. There's no plot here, most of the gags are recycled and the animation is really the only thing to this cartoon.This short shows various types of birds moving to music. The best part from the first half of the short is a peacock strutting around, eventually spreading its plumage, only to get a raspberry from a little duck.The last three or so minutes of this attempts to inject some drama by having a chick taken from a farm by a predator bird. Another bird sees the chick get grabbed and calls out reinforcements. The birds get into a flying formation (a "Vee") and take off after the predator.They ultimately rescue the chick, which reunites with its mother hen by calling out, "Mammy!" and there's a happy ending.This short is available on the Disney Treasures Silly Symphonies DVD set. The set is worth tracking down.

Shawn Watson There's not much story to this very early black-and-white cartoon. It's just more of an animation showcase featuring birds going about their business - singing, preening, paddling etc.One of the baby ducks even says "meep meep", long before Warner created the famous Roadrunner. A hawk (or vulture or something) swoops down to steal a chick for dinner, but as usual cartoons never portray the bloody carnage of real life so the bird eventually flies off with an empty tummy.The sound design and music give the short a little extra dimension, though other than that it is way to primitive to have any sort of lasting appeal.

TheLittleSongbird I do enjoy the Silly Symphonies, having grown up with most of them, and I even would call some of them masterpieces. Birds of a Feather is not one of the masterpieces to me, but it isn't a piece of whatever either. For the first half of the cartoon the action is cute yet uneventful. The second half picks up the pace, and while not exceptional by all means there is signs of a story. I did like that in a sense, but in terms of the cartoon itself it was rather uneven, Birds of a Feather preferably should've been plot less the whole time or had a story throughout, two halves that had one or the other didn't completely mix for me. Some of the sequences of the first half are also rather slow-moving and basically just birds dancing and chirping to the music. However, the music is truly lovely, the birds are cute and the dancing while not much standout-worthy is well-choreographed. But the best asset was the animation, fluid and smooth with some very well done sequences, such as the opening part with the swans on the lake, the- different-bird-on-every-limb sequence, the birds flying in formation and dive bombing the hawk, how the peacock displays its feathers and the sophisticated idea of a group of baby chicks weave in and out of the mother hen's legs. Overall, nothing really special, but the animation and music are worth looking out for. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Ron Oliver A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.It is a beautiful day, and the BIRDS OF A FEATHER of the forest & farmyard are romancing their mates and tending to their young. That is, until a rapacious raptor comes on the scene & carries off a baby chick...This black & white cartoon is another example of how important music (often classical) was to the Symphonies.The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.