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A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss
by Robert Macfarlane, Jackie Morris
Book Reviewed by: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.
Macfarlane's signature evocative metaphors run consistently throughout the book. The bobbing movements of a grey wagtail are "a skimmed stone on an iced-up lake," while the swooping flight of a kestrel is "the ice skater's crescent, the bend of a bow, the elliptical arc of an outer planet." In this way, Macfarlane brings a personal touch to what could otherwise have felt like a fairly standard field guide...continued
Full Review
(763 words)
(Reviewed by Callum McLaughlin).
Writer Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris have established themselves as leading names in the UK and beyond when it comes to writing about nature. Their work aims to foster reverence for the world around us and inspire us to defend it.
The seed of their first collaboration was planted when Oxford University Press removed several nature-based words from its junior dictionary, citing they were no longer in everyday use among children. Morris was contacted by poet Laurence Rose, who asked her to sign a letter requesting the words be reinstated. Concerned that the proposed erasure of words like "bluebell," "acorn," "kingfisher," and "heron" could lead to a lack of appreciation for the natural world, Morris wanted to do more than ...
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