Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss

Nature writer Macfarlane (Is a River Alive?) and artist Morris (Wild Folk) deliver an imaginative and beautifully illustrated field guide to help readers honor, admire, and “identify with” threatened bird species. From Avocets to Woodcocks, there are essays on 49 birds, some of which are written from the perspective of the birds themselves; one on Moorhens takes the form of a dating profile (“We’re the same type of weird if: Your toes are as long as your head”). Avocets, Macfarlane explains, were once driven to near extinction in England when their mudflat nesting grounds were repurposed for farmland. However, when sea walls were breached during WWII, the farms flooded, enabling the birds to return, “thriving amid our barbarity.” Razorbills, dark-feathered with a beak formed like a tool, live among the cliffs along the North Atlantic and are “the last of the auks alive upon this failing ark we know as Earth,” he notes. The stunning qualities of birds are made clear: under sunlight, the kestrel “suddenly becomes translucent; her feathers shone through like stained glass, like colored crystal.” Starlings’ feathers are like “foil: they’re glittering, iridescent galaxy-maps.” The ordinary becomes extraordinary in this ode to the wonders of the natural world. Bird lovers will be delighted. (June)