| Title | : | The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1452174032 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781452174037 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 176 |
| Publication | : | First published April 2, 2019 |
| Awards | : | Goodreads Choice Award Humor (2019) |
The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America Reviews
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I found this book on sale today and grabbed it. The first time I read it was for NetGalley. I immediately read it again today! I giggled so much! Love it!
The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America by Matt Kracht is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary. This book is going in my favorite folder for sure! This is hilarious! I laughed out loud and giggled all the way through! The author has a wicked sense of humor, clever, witty, and the funniest art!
His bird "guide" has everything from rules to follow, tools, how to keep a journal, and his own description and art of birds.
He has his name for the birds and then the common name. A description of the birds then their color or tips about them or both. Then the picture. My gosh, my stomach hurt from laughing! I read bits to my mom who is in her 80's and she started laughing!
This is a book for any bird lover, animal lover, or anyone that needs a good laugh! -
Matt Kracht is actually a bird-lover, and his facetious guide is, unlike serious guides, meant for all readers. I liked Kracht’s cynical tone and found the book mildly amusing. It relies a little too heavily on juvenile names (e.g., “Pileated Woodfucker” for “Pileated Woodpecker”; “Golden Crowned Dumb-Shit” for “Golden-crowned Kinglet”), but it's balanced by angry-messy (but still good) illustrations and irreverent brief descriptions:
Great Grey Shite
Common Name: Great Grey Shrike
This ice-cold motherfucker is what’s called a “predatory songbird.” It really should be called “Murder-Bird” because the homicidal little shrike feeds on small mammals and other birds and, I swear I am not making this up, often impales them on thorns or barbed wire fences. That is some sick shit right there. Its scientific name, Lanius excubitor, literally means “sentinel butcher.”
Bonus Fact: If you look into the cold, black abyss of their eyes you can see evil.
The book is a blend of funny and serious. It’s obviously comedic and can’t be used as a true guide--especially without photographs--but it also includes the kinds of facts one might see in a conventional guide and sections on such things as choosing the right bird feeder, the ethics of bird-watching, and “tools and tips for writing and drawing in the field.” Bird-lovers with a sense of humor who aren't offended by cuss words will probably like this, and beginners will learn a few things. -
I saw this book as sixth place in the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award humor category so thought I would order it from the library. I thought the title was pretty funny, and I thought the juvenile humor might just appeal to some of the actual juveniles in this house, but I didn't share it with them because the main comedic strategy is to use Marine-level swearing (cf, that picture book for adults, Go the F... to Sleep) such as replacing Red-Breasted Sapsucker with Red-breasted Shitsucker, and so on. The juvenile humor is mildly funny, I guess: Belted King-Pisser instead of Kingfisher, or Dumb Western Bluebird instead of Western Bluebird, so the point of the joke is to make the author actually appear dumb. Self-parody.
"He draws pretty well for being so dumb! Matt Kracht? Nope, Matt Crocked, haw haw haw haw haw! Put that in your nest and suck an egg, Matt Crap!"--From the boid Crap calls Red-winged Butt-Wad! "Pretty funny, Not! That's Red-Winged Blackbird to you, wise guy! Don't give up your day job!" -
It's SPRING and if you live above the equator that means that the weather should be getting warmer and the dumb birds are hopping around and making their usual incessant noise and pooping on your cars and waking you at ungodly hours. I say "should' because it is supposed to snow across most of North America this week and dumb because, hello? Who wakes up before the sun rises on purpose!?! :) Yes, I love birds. I adore them. I feed them and attract them and I really do have a backyard wildlife habitat. Like the book, The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America, I'm just being cheeky.
Matt Kracht has written a very funny, tongue in cheek guide to some of the most common birds found in North America. He has humorously renamed them so that we might easily remember them. For example, there is the White Breasted Butt Nugget, the Western Meadow Jerk or, simply, the damn crows. He tends to feel about crows the same way I do. The entire page is filled with Caw, Caw, Caw, Caw, Caw..... Yes, that really is all that you need to know about the damn crow, isn't it?
Kracht also accompanies each delightful paragraph of information with his own personal illustrations. Okay, some are better than others depending on how well he likes the bird. I won't even show you the illustration of the crow which resembles something a two year old with a black marker might draw in a fit of rage. Again, very aptly done when considering the caw-caw-caw of the crow. Most, however, are beautifully rendered.
Despite the irreverence, the information throughout the book, the details, the drawings - with a few noted exceptions - the maps, and the highlights are very informative. If I were teaching children about birds.... okay, well, there is some mild cursing but aside from that, I can assure you that kids definitely would remember these birds better than they would a regular field guide. Absolutely! I know that I will! It also makes for a terrific coffee table book and conversation piece. Guests have adored it! I adore it! I haven't laughed this hard or this much in a very long time!!
Thank you to #netgalley, #ChronicleBooks and @MattKracht for my copy of #TheFieldGuidetoDumbBirdsofNorthAmerica -
I don’t see how you can rate this below all the stars honestly. My father-in-law had a copy at my husbands PhD graduation and briefly skimming it made me buy it immediately. It’s been a coffee table hit, numerous friends and family have bought it since seeing my copy and it’s been a strait up TREAT to read through over the past few months. 103837629/10 for this book.
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I have been bird watching for as long as I can remember. I must have five bird identification books on Birds of North American, West of the Rockies. But, even if you have all of those and more, you will want this book. This book is both snarky, and serious. Funny and fun. It gives you true facts, mixed in with bizaar thoughts.
He has also renamed birds, mentioned in here, for his humor and amusement.
The Western MeadowJerk, instead of the Western Meadow Lark. The Dork-eyed Junko, instead of Dark-eyed Junko.
He gives little sort of true, sort of snarky comments about each bird. Until he gets to the crows, whom he refers to as the Damn Crows.Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw! That's pretty much it with these jerks.
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He says a little bit more about the American Robin, whom he called the Dumb-Ass Robin. "They are an excellent source of food for cats".
About the rock pigeon he writes "Oh my god, do I even need to talk about this bird? You can blindfold these birds, and they can find their way home. What's even the point? Save your tiny blindfolds for some other bird, I guess."
This is the sort of guide you can buy as a gift, but that will actually help you identify the birds aorund you. It would also make a good gift to your birding friends.
Lots of fun.
Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. -
Funny juvenile humor mostly about backyard song birds with author's own ugly illustrations. LOL, I don't think he would mind me being frank. The author also included extincted species, and migration maps. A latter section provided tips and guides on bird feeders, and equipment for bird watching.
This is a light guide with TONS of profanity and unsuitable for young children.
Look at this poor bird.😄
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Well, you just never know about humor. Or alleged humor. This one didn't click with me at all (to my surprise) -- though there are moments. Such as the great cover art! FWIW, my wife didn't care for it, either.
For a positive opinion, see Laura's entertaining, illustrated review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Thanks for the reco, Laura. I was looking forward to this one.... Sorry it didn't work out! -
Hilarious. And insightful; this drew you in laughing and kept you captive with it's calculated sass - educating you all the while.
An effective example for how more educational publications should be written with a level of intent to entertain; investment made easy, dry facts accessible/retainable.
Delightfully creative. -
I get that this was supposed to be humorous. At times, it was. I appreciated the author poking fun at the pretentious aspects of "birding", and the sketch for "Who is shitting on the picnic table" read like a detective trying to solve the case. The amateur sketchings were a positive addition, too, but the individual entries for birds read like the petulant rantings of a twelve-year-old. If that was the author's intent, great, but it didn't work for me. And for the record, as much as I hate being woken up by... anything, I'll take blue jay squawking over chain saws, wood chippers, leaf blowers, and lawn mowers any day. :)
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The cover is cute and the title alluring, at least for a bird nut like me. The drawings are pretty charming and when the author hewed closely to the actual behaviors of his feathered subjects, he gave me some chuckles. Unfortunately, over the course of a whole book his shtick wore very thin. He’s one of those humorists who imagines that cuss words, especially when spelled with asterisks, are inherently funny. He is mistaken.
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Birds are everywhere— totally unavoidable. In parks, in your backyard, even stray ones drift into stores. And their prominence has led to the development of a specific kind of person: the birdwatcher. Now there’s a guide for new or expert birders interested in perfecting the favorite pastime of … sitting and watching birds.
The tone of this book is set with the title: The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America. Author Matt Kracht obviously has an interesting relationship these animals, and his blunt attitude stretches beyond the cover. Each bird featured includes a notation about their common name, but Kracht also renames them. The White-Breasted Butt Nugget (White-Breasted Nuthatch) and the Western MeadowJerk (Western Meadow Lark) both make appearances, among a flock of fifty. Some of these work better than others, but they all serve for Kracht to degrade what he considers flying monstrosities.
Beyond just the names, this book is wickedly funny. Kracht embodies an individual with absolute disdain for all things bird. In his world, their only functions are to make annoying noises and steal food, and he won’t hear a word otherwise. Yes, it’s over the top, but Kracht mocks with absolutely infectious glee, almost goading the reader to challenge his view on why these aviary creatures suck.
Even with all the snark, Kracht is careful to load up on facts. He describes their calls, migratory patterns, markings, and includes accurate illustrations. However, it’s the sections that bookend the guide that are both insightful and suggest Kracht might have a softer side when it comes to birds. Here, he discusses the art of birding, picking proper bird feeders, as well as maintaining a bird jounal. His style of ridiculing the hobby and the animal is still on display, but it almost appears to stem from a deep admiration— he’s too cool for bird watching … but it’s still fun.
It’s funny, it’s crass, and as a particularly annoying bird would say, “Caw! Caw! Caw!”
Note: I received a free ARC of this book through NetGalley. -
I could blame the dreary, stressful months of the pandemic, but I don’t think that’s the real reason that The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America is the first book in ages to make me laugh until I cried. I howled at the birds included in such categories as “Hummingbirds, Weirdos and Flycatchers,” “Egotists and Show-Offs,” “Murder Birds” and ones Goodreads would not appreciate my including. Author Matthew Kracht’s nicknames for these birds (although their common names are included, as well) will make you laugh aloud, although nearly none of them are words I could use in my elementary classroom. Exceptions are the Doofus Hummingbird, the Goddamned Canada Goose (have to agree here) and the White-Breasted Butt Nugget. (Trust me; it’s funnier when Kracht does it.)
A plus is that Kracht actually intertwines actual facts about these common North American birds and his illustrations are fantastical in both senses of the words. Readers won’t be able to resist re-reading this short gem over and over. -
In the past year did you let it slip to your friends/family that you like birds? If so you were likely the recipient of multiple copies of this book for Christmas 2019. It sounds funny and promising but ultimately I think it's a missed opportunity.
Who is this book for? Experienced birders, bird-lovers, or people who birders are trying to convert? I couldn't quite figure it out.
I like a good joke or pun but I'm not the biggest fan of toilet humour/swearing for swearing's sake, which got really repetitive in this book. How many times can you work the word "butt" into a funny name for a bird? It got boring. I wish they'd had someone do a punch up on this book because it could have been a lot funnier instead of the same jokes over and over. Birds are really funny and weird and ALREADY have ridiculous dirty-sounding names (bushtit, woodcock, woodpecker) and I don't think the author capitalized on that enough. It felt lazy.
I am all for using ridiculous pneumonics, and the silly bird names in this book probably would be helpful for newer birders to remember names but instead of just inserting "butt" or "shit" into random bird names I think they could have tried harder to make the silly names actually descriptive and representative of the bird's appearance or behaviour. One really great example where they did do this was the limpkin ("limpdick") entry, but it wasn't consistent.
If this was meant to be an introductory field guide I don't understand why the addition of info like habitat, behaviour, identifying characteristics was only included for some birds and not all. They had room to do it, didn't make sense why it was only on some pages and not others. Also there was some general bad editing throughout (typos, missing words, etc.).
Things I liked - the parts where the author toned down the toilet humour and made it a bit more subtle (intro, end chapters). The drawings are legit awesome.
The idea of this book was a brilliant one, but poorly executed in my opinion. If I had someone to illustrate for me and like, a book deal, I honestly think I could have written this better.
No disrespect to anyone who gifted this to me ;) Glad for the chance to check it out. -
Wie witzig kann ein Buch sein bitte? 🤣🤣🤣
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I am not a bird watcher, and certainly not a birder; bird -er: one who birds. That word is surely one of the most inelegant forced conversions of noun to verb in the English language. Anyway, where I live most of the feathered thieves are pigeons or seagulls, both of which belong to the taxonomy group “rats with wings.” Nevertheless, looking for something light to read after a couple of more demanding books, I found this in my library’s e-books section and decided to give it a go.
It is short, and can be finished in an hour or two, and it is frequently funny in a wisecracking sort of way. And I actually did learn something: I can now tell a Starling (pink feet/yellow bill) from a Grackle (black feet/black bill) when they descend in unholy swarms.
For people who want to do the whole bird thing, the book has some useful practical advice on what you need to know if you plan on spending your leisure hours on an activity so boring it actually makes golf look exciting. There is information about things like proper etiquette and keeping a journal, though nothing on how to assuage the existential angst that overcomes you when you are tramping about for hours wondering,“What am I doing with my life?”
One of my neighbors despaired over his bird feeders; no matter what he did the squirrels still managed to scare off the birds and ransack the food. He even had video of the raiders, attacking like furry little Visigoths. As I watched, all I could think was, “I’m with the squirrels. I’ll side with my fellow mammals every time against beady-eyed mutant dinosaur spawn.” I also once walked by a canal and watched seagulls pry clams off the bottom and drop them onto the road again and again until the shells cracked open. At the time I thought that was pretty sophisticated behavior for something with a brain the size of a walnut, but it is apparently an evolutionary fluke: like most of their feathered kin a seagull is dumb as a post, well deserving the epithet “bird brained.”
So, who is this book for? It would make a good gift for anyone who actually – god help them – likes to spend time watching birds. It’s not for kids, unless you want the wee ones to get an early start learning to swear like a longshoreman. However, the book will make you smile, which is why it exists, and at that it succeeds in its goal. -
Think it’s a funny idea but will probably never read. Just funny to read about it.
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I'm doing a reading challenge, and this book fit the bill (haha, see what I did there?). At first, I thought it was hilarious, but I quickly discovered it's not a book that I could sit down and read for long periods of time, as I would get super annoyed by it. There's only so many iterations of "dumb birds" and "stupid birds" and "bird asshats" I could take. At the end, I discovered he had started a blog, then turned that blog into this book, which makes complete sense. I think it works better as a blog, because it's spaced out and the humor is allowed to shine forth better.
I should say, I completely agree with him that birds are little shits, literally. One bird even pooped inside my car once. I had left the windows down while I was home for lunch, and I still can't figure out how the bird poop got on my middle console. Maybe it was retribution for all the times I cussed birds out for waking me up at the crack of dawn, those assholes. -
Chock full of fowl language. The best pages made me laugh out loud, and that's a huge thing, because I'm not one who is easily humored. The joke does wear thin, however: it's 170 pages of birds are dumb, here's how we can change the name of this stupid bird, whine, complain, and so forth. It was a quick read, perfect for a night when I was considering trading my own children for a house full of birds.
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I thought I had a sense of humor about birds, but then he writes that the only good thing about robins is that they keep the local cats fed and I'm CLUTCHING MY PEARLS HOW DARE YOU SIR THESE ARE MY PRECIOUS BABIES.
But truly, is it funny to complain that birds are loud? Again and again and again? I'd rather listen to some crow caws. -
I got this for my mom as a funny Christmas present because she loves birds, but I ended up reading it myself with my whole family and we never stopped laughing. North America has an exceedingly large amount of dumb birds it's almost concerning.
No rating because this is essentially just one guy talking about how much he hates geese for 176 pages. -
This was a gift two Christmases ago from my avid “birder” step-MIL. Wish I’d read it sooner. It’s a funny little read. There’s real information in this guide but it’s presented casually and in a very snarky manner. The sketches are great, too. An all-around amusing read!
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hilarious and entertaining for the bird nerd in your life... great Christmas Eve surprise. Took me an hour.
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Initially not that funny, but then the short descriptions peppered with profanity grew on me after a dozen or so interesting interpretations of the various commonly found birds of North America. The drawing of each bird featured and footnotes are cute.
Reading this book is like reading a very bored and slightly rebellious child's report of birds in their natural habitats, being loud and disgruntled. Good use of swear words by the way.
Having read this book, I now have some appreciation for all the noise outside my window during the warmer months. It's hard not to wake up screaming these days, and I can relate. -
Best guide to birds and bird watching ever!
Oh my goodness, I laughed. I have bird watchers in my family and while I enjoy birds and love having them around, I am not a bird watcher.
I am not thrilled when birds (swallows) nest ON my home, I am not thrilled while I clean bird poop off my furniture, and I am not thrilled when crows wake me up at 3:30a.m, as the sun is rising in northern Canada.
But I was thrilled with this hilarious book! -
This field guide is a humorous look at identifying birds. It offers some true facts surrounded by offbeat humor. My first issue with this book is the tiny print. Need good light and decent reading glasses to read this one. The format may come off as amusing material for a stand up comedian but the use of the F word and other adult language didn't bring me that much entertainment. Quick read but not one I would recommend.
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If you have a birder in the family this is a great gift. It's funny and some of the points are spot on. It has 50 different birds and a good index and table of content. Even non birders will find themselves smiling as they pick out some of the birds they know. The illustrations are hand drawn and fit the book perfectly. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
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Birds | Cursing | Funny
Rating: 4 stars
A non-fiction humorous book about birds found in the wild. It was good but it felt a little short. I would've liked even more birds or more information about each bird. The drawings are a nice addition however. If you want to read a relatively short non-fiction book but also don't want it to be boring and you kinda like birds, pick it up. -
This book is necessary. As an old fuddy-duddy I think the language goes a slight bit too far. If it avoided the f-word and the lesser blasphemies I would buy a copy for everyone I know. I can't say it is not funny though.
The bird scholarship is accurate and the things he mocks the birds for are on point. Good book for the frustrated beginning birder. -
An essential purchase if you are even remotely serious about birds. This is the best bird guide in existence, in my opinion. A perfect choice if you want to learn about birds while laughing your butt off. ;-)
