It’s hard to articulate. I love birds, they are my favorite… but I also hate birds. It’s complicated. I delight in their behavior, but so many of them are also arseholes. Take the ducks we used to keep—they fowled up the dam. The turkeys? Bloody stupid creatures. The geese? Vicious bastards*. My Auntie’s beloved silky bantam rooster, Kevin? Busted internal chronometer; would never shut up. I have been mocked by kookaburras, experienced a gleek of emu attacks, a car stripping by corellas and a blood draw courtesy of a magpie with a vendetta against cyclists. (Which is to say, a regular magpie.)
The biologist in me still loves them all, but there’s still a part of me that will admit that birds are the worst. And despite the fact that I’ve lived across a number of continents now, you might recognize the fact that most of my bad-bird encounters seem to be concentrated in one location.
This book is delightfully funny and silly. Kracht takes absolute delight in giving a negative review to each and every entry in the book. To facilitate this, he has graded the birds using his very own Bird Universal Mathematical Modelling and Ranking system (BUMMR), whose internal logical remains a mystery to me. He also gives each bird a new, more descriptive (and expletive-filled) name, and a lovely handrawn illustration or two—usually of the bird itself, but sometimes, he provides more ‘scientific’ diagrams:
I think the kind of humor you’ll find throughout the book is clearly on display here.
This is a fun book, that I suspect is meant to be cathartic for bird watchers—and perhaps a secret recruitment tool aimed towards those of us who are not. Because, sandwiched between the snark at each end of the book, Kracht leaves some slightly more serious bird-notes (still illustrated). There is a lot of extra information provided on their feet, and why certain species are the way they are. So yes, even when laughing at a new, juvenile nickname or the potential for lark-free fun in North America, you might still learn something new.
My only criticism? Of all the Australian birds to be declared to be part of the worst, why the galah? They are the only Australian cockatoo I would describe as (mostly) sweet-natured. They’re probably not going to nip your fingers off or strip the windscreen wipers off your car. (Again, that’s corellas. Thanks corellas.)
For cbr17bingo, this is Favorite. I know, it’s complicated, as I said at the start.
