Book Review: Nonfiction Challenge #12

A Dumb Birds Field Guide to the Worst Birds Ever

By Matt Kratch

Published: March 2025

Summary from Goodreads:

Confession:

This book was hilarious. I really enjoyed reading it. Being a backyard birder I could totally relate to some of the things he was saying about these birds. They can be annoying sometimes, but they are a lot of fun to watch and never boring.

This is a very easy book to read. It is one that you can pick up and read a few pages whenever you have the time. I just loved his made up name for each bird, and appreciated that he also included both the scientific names and the common names for each bird. Each page is a short description of the bird, why the author finds it annoying and then an illustration that are well done, if not entirely accurate. Could you use this book as a guide to identifying birds? Maybe some of the more distinctive ones, but certainly none of the little brown ones.

This book covers many birds from North America, but there are also some from around the world. I enjoyed learning about these new birds and found their descriptions and why the author would find them irritating funny. I did find it interesting that the author admitted to never seeing some of these birds, but yet had a strong opinion about them.

This is the third book in this series, but you certainly don’t have to read them in order. I just might pick up the one that is specific to North America. If you know someone who is a birder, even just the backyard kind like me, or even someone who is into nature, these books would make a great gift.