‘The Book of Birds’: Not just identifying avian species, but relating to them - CSMonitor.com
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Books
‘The Book of Birds’ illustrates a world of wonder
From “The Book Of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss” by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
Jackie Morris painted these nightingales, whose scientific name is Luscinia megarhynchos. Luscinia from the Latin luctus – which means “singer of laments.”
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By Heller McAlpin<br>Contributor
June 09, 2026, 5:05 p.m. ET
Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, the British writer and illustrator who teamed up to create 2017’s delightful children’s picture book “The Lost Words” are back with “The Book of Birds,” another beautiful, eminently giftable, clarion call to pay attention to the wonders of the natural world.<br>Both books are underpinned by concerns about the sidelining of nature in modern life. “The Lost Words” celebrates in sumptuous illustrations and playful hidden words the names of 20 common creatures and plants – including adders, otters, heather, and fern – that were, to the authors’ dismay, dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. The compilers had made room instead for newer technological terms like “blog” and “broadband.”<br>The selection of species in “The Book of Birds” is largely United Kingdom-centric, though many will be familiar to even casual American birdwatchers. Macfarlane and Morris showcase 49 species, from avocet to yellowhammer, whose populations have been decimated or threatened by a changing climate, loss of habitat, commercial exploitation, and disease.
Why We Wrote This
With swooping, poetic prose and vivid watercolors, “The Book of Birds” offers an introduction to what writer Robert Macfarlane calls “the seven wonders of birds”: nests, eggs, beaks, songs, feathers, flight, and migration. The field guide conveys not only wonder but also concern over the plight of many species.
Macfarlane writes, “A great thinning of the skies is under way,” and he goes on to point out that nearly 50% of bird species worldwide are in decline.
From “The Book Of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss” by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
The sparrow hawk, also known as the stone falcon, is “designed for hunting hairpin turns ... sudden slingshot dives and hurtles out of cover,” writes Robert Macfarlane, whose prose is more like poetry. Morris’ painting captures the steeliness of this bird of prey.
“The Book of Birds” is no mere catalog of endangered species. It’s a lovingly produced introduction to what Macfarlane calls “the seven wonders of birds”: nests, eggs, beaks, songs, feathers, flight, and migration. Full-throated prose poems flag distinguishing habitats, habits, and character traits that make the birds come alive in a way that more traditional field guides do not. To further aid in identification, illustrated tables at the back of the book identify the species’ varied eggs, Latin and common names, average length, weight, and lifespan.<br>Macfarlane’s most recent book is “Is a River Alive?” (2025). He is perhaps best known for what he has called “the literature of the foot” – like his now classic “The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot” (2012), about how landscape and nature connect with language and literature.<br>Macfarlane’s stated goal in “The Book of Birds” is not just to identify birds, “but also to identify with them” (my emphasis). This is why the volume is illustrated with paintings instead of photographs, and wields metaphor, story, and poetry to enhance data. The authors clearly believe that familiarity breeds caring; people, Macfarlane writes, “will not save what we do not love, and we rarely love what we cannot name.”
Macfarlane festoons his soaring descriptions with internal rhymes, ribbons of adjectives, metaphors, acrobatic verbs, legends, and personal stories. Often, he addresses the birds directly. On the page, these flights of fancy can come across as florid and overwritten. But when read aloud, Macfarlane’s lyrical tributes paint word-pictures you’re more likely to remember than dry lists of facts.
From “The Book Of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss” by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
A tawny owl flies on silent wings in Jackie Morris’ painting.
A few examples: The bar-tailed godwit, Macfarlane writes, is “migration’s undisputed record-breaker,” traveling 6,000 miles or more. He calls it an “equator-crossing, ocean-spanning specialist of the one-hop, non-stop, eight-night, Alaska-to-Australasia journey.” He writes of the nefarious, nest-stealing cuckoo, with its “devious,...