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The Book of Birds
  • Published: 7 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781405985338
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $28.00

The Book of Birds

A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss

Formats & editions
Hardback
11 Aug 2026
Audiobook
7 May 2026
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From the creators of the internationally bestselling, award-winning, multi-adapted phenomenon The Lost Words: a dazzling celebration of birdlife in Britain, re-imagining the classic field guide for a new generation of nature lovers

A great thinning of the skies is underway. Around 50% of bird species are in decline worldwide. Our dawns and springs are quieter each year than the last. An almost unimaginable abundance has been lost. It does not have to be this way –– but we will not save what we do not love.

The Book of Birds is a compendium of forty-nine bird species, from Avocet to Yellowhammer, all of which are presently declining or endangered in Britain. Inspired by the classic bird-books with which the authors grew up, this is a field guide with a difference. It asks not ‘What is that bird?’, but ‘Who is that bird?’ It shows its readers how to identify birds, but also how to identify with them.

With lyrical precision and playfulness, Robert Macfarlane evokes each bird’s habits and habitats –– their patterns of flight and of song, how they hunt and gather, how they nest and raise their young, the stories and myths which attend them, the threats which shadow them, and how their wild lives intersect with our own. And on every page we encounter Jackie Morris’s exhilarating artwork, painted in watercolour and gold and animated by an extraordinary attention to detail and sense of life. Set among this dazzling flock of species are seven sections celebrating the 'Seven Wonders' that together make up the everyday miracle of 'Bird': Nest, Egg, Beak, Song, Feather, Flight and Migration.

Seven years in the making, The Book of Birds is a love letter to the splendours and mysteries of birdlife, and a clarion call to halt the loss of birds from land, sea and sky. From Dipper to Dunnock and Kestrel to Kingfisher, from mountain to ocean and city to river, Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane conjure the unique spirit and lifeway of each species. This is a book to be treasured by bird-lovers of all ages, and a future classic work of reference.
  • Published: 7 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781405985338
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $28.00

About the authors

Jackie Morris

Jackie Morris has written or illustrated over seventy books, including the beloved children’s classics Tell Me a Dragon and East of the Sun, West of the Moon and a volume of modern folklore for readers of all ages, Wild Folk, co-created with Tamsin Abbott, as well as introducing and illustrating Barbara Newhall Follett’s gem of wild literature, The House Without Windows. She is the internationally bestselling and award-winning co-creator of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, two books which have captured the hearts of hundreds of thousands of readers of all ages. In 2018 she won the Kate Greenaway Medal and the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year for The Lost Words. Her artwork is held by public art collections in the UK and USA and has been published in the New Statesman, Independent and Guardian among other venues. She tours and performs with the Spell Songs ensemble around the UK, and is a Fellow of Herefordshire Art College. Morris and Macfarlane's latest project, The Book of Birds, will be published in May 2026.
JM

Praise for The Book of Birds

True to Robert Macfarlane’s epiphanies about nature in last year’s wonderful Is A River Alive? this compendium of birds tries to answer the question not "what" but more, "who is that bird?". The 49 species here are all illustrated by the beautiful watercolours of Jackie Morris, Macfarlane’s collaborator on The Lost Words, and are all currently endangered or in decline. A field guide of songs and spirits as much as nests and habits

Shortlist, 'Our 25 most anticipated non-fiction books for 2026'

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

Based on classic bird books of old, this lyrical love letter showcases 49 declining or endangered species, featuring incredible illustrations throughout

Country Living

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

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

A dazzling compendium of 49 bird species inspired by classic bird guides with which the authors grew up

iNews

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

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

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

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

Evocative and incantory . . . A handsome volume, attractively illustrated, good for the coffee table or as a gift book

Literary Review

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 delight. Macfarlane's love of language and different cultural traditions make it a trove of avian lore and history . . . The book is illustrated by one of our most distinctive and prolific painters, Jackie Morris. She sees the dinosaur in the bird. Her portraits have a savagery about them, as if she is captured by the creatures' appetites, their thrust and strut and will to life. It is as though she is painting their souls as she conceives them . . . The book flaps and yells and squawks with life, its pages bursting with a ferocious, combative kind of beauty

The Spectator