The Book of Birds

Full of gorgeous illustrations and inimitable prose … The Book of Birds asks us to think of birds in radically new ways: not simply as separate components of Nature that we should learn about and identify, but as co-creators of our world that we can identify with * Country Life *
From flight patterns to song, myth and mating rituals, each bird is celebrated in Morris’s vibrant paintings and Macfarlane’s lyrical accompanying notes * National Geographic *
Spellbinding and lyrical … A companion, helping you to discover wonder in the everyday … The significance of this beautiful book cannot be underestimated … Rooted in wonder, The Book of Birds has the power to persuade - to be the catalyst that reminds us all of what we stand to lose, and to spur us on to help our precious birdlife thrive once more * RSPB *
A vivid lexical treasury … dramatic, playful and designed to be read aloud … Macfarlane’s words have a tumbling, delirious, somersaulting quality … Morris’s watercolours, meanwhile, have a luminous shiver about them, not stiff and scientific, but seemingly reconjured from a first childhood sighting * Irish Independent *
A passionate and lyrical rallying cry to both revel in the beauty of the natural world and to stop its wanton destruction … [Morris and Macfarlane’s] avowed intent is to make us fall in love with birds. And it works brilliantly … Pleasing to hold, beautiful to look at, The Book of Birds marks the moment poetry and art took their rightful places alongside science in a coalition to save our birds – and ourselves * The Tablet *
A love letter to our feathered friends … The audio edition features terrific sound design courtesy of field recordist Chris Watson, known for his work with David Attenborough. Watson has meticulously recorded the call of each bird and incorporated them into each chapter. This blend of lyrical prose and birdsong make for moving love letter to our feathered friends * Observer *
A dazzling compendium of 49 bird species inspired by classic bird guides with which the authors grew up * iNews *
A magnificent achievement … The artwork by Morris is as numinous as ever. The gold creates a field of permanence, against which the birds seem to move … Macfarlane’s writing is jaw-dropping * The Scotsman *
Based on classic bird books of old, this lyrical love letter showcases 49 declining or endangered species, featuring incredible illustrations throughout * Country Living *
Highly recommended … A sense of immediacy is created by the fact that each lyrical passage, accompanied by charming depictions, is often written in the present tense * The Field *

Robert Macfarlane’s Sunday Times- and New York Times-bestselling books include Is a River Alive?, Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind, as well as a book-length prose-poem, Ness. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, won prizes around the world, and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio and dance. He has also written operas, plays, albums, choral works, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe.

Macfarlane has collaborated closely with artists including Olafur Eliasson, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E.M. Forster Prize for Literature, and in 2023 in Toronto he was the inaugural winner of the Weston International Award for a body of work in the field of non-fiction. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is presently working on a graphic novel re-telling of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Macfarlane and Morris’s latest project, The Book of Birds, will be published in May 2026.

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