You’ve never read a bird book like this one, written and illustrated in a spirit of determined awareness, augmenting facts with spirited play ... The Book of Birds is, like poetry, a form of memory, recovery and ritualizing delight ... The book educates without dullness.
Another beautiful, eminently giftable, clarion call to pay attention to the wonders of the natural world ... The Book of Birds is no mere catalog of endangered species ... 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 ... I had never before read a field guide from cover to cover, but after marveling at the wonders in The Book of Birds, I can well understand the authors’ profound admiration for their subjects.
The Book of Birds delivers a stark warning in its introduction about the 'great thinning of the skies … Dawns and springs are quieter; the air emptier. An ancient avian orchestra is falling silent' ... Each entry is a prose poem aimed at evoking the spirit and the unique qualities of each bird, among them the kingfisher, nightingale, nightjar, song thrush, tern, tawny owl and puffin ... Terrific.
Macfarlane’s writing is jaw-dropping ... This is not a book, but a treasure. I hope it does not become an epitaph. Morris and Macfarlane should hold their heads up high at this achievement.
Robert Macfarlane, the most admired nature writer of our time, has acknowledged his debt to the prose of The Peregrine ... Macfarlane has now brought his self-acknowledged Baker-likeness to its apogee. Together with the artist Jackie Morris he has produced the sumptuous The Book of Birds ... Macfarlane’s prose is not to everyone’s taste. Like all great writers, he is open to parody ... The imagination and the care for the fragility of the non-human world amount to more than the weight of the prose.
In this field guide like no other, preeminent nature writer Macfarlane (Is a River Alive?, 2025) and artist Jackie Morris have again joined forces to inform and entrance readers ... A radiant, exhilarating, and invaluable creation.
Though the book declares itself to be a field guide, readers will not find a handy and weatherproof tome in these pages ... Macfarlane’s text is most akin to prose poetry ... Not the most practical bird guide, but an important one.
An imaginative and beautifully illustrated field guide to help readers honor, admire, and 'identify with' threatened bird species ... The ordinary becomes extraordinary in this ode to the wonders of the natural world. Bird lovers will be delighted.
