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Book Summary and Reviews of The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris

The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris

The Book of Birds

A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss

by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Jun 2026, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the best-selling authors of The Lost Words, a dazzling celebration of endangered birds.

The Book of Birds is a field guide with a difference: It shows readers not just how to identify birds, but also how to identify with them. Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris conjure the unique spirit of nearly fifty once-common species: avocet to yellowhammer, kestrel to kingfisher, skylark to nightingale. In lyrical and incantatory essays, Macfarlane describes each bird's habits and habitats, their patterns of flight and patterns of song, how they hunt or fish or scavenge or gather, how they nest and raise their chicks, the myths that attend them, the threats that shadow them―and how their lives intersect with our own. On every page we encounter Morris's exhilarating artwork, painted from life in watercolor and gold leaf, and animated with an extraordinary attention to detail. The Book of Birds is a love letter to the thrilling variety and mysteries of birdlife, and a clarion call to halt the rapid depletion of our skies.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The ordinary becomes extraordinary in this ode to the wonders of the natural world. Bird lovers will be delighted." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Detailed, sumptuous...an evocation or a prayer over the memory of birds that risk being forgotten." ―Kirkus Reviews

This information about The Book of Birds was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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More Information

Robert Macfarlane's bestselling books include Underland, The Old Ways, and Mountains of the Mind. With the artist Jackie Morris he is the coauthor of The Lost Words, The Lost Spells, and The Book of Birds. He is the recipient of the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature and the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence and is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Jackie Morris is the best-selling and award-winning cocreator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. She lives in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

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