Today's Featured Book:
The Book of Birds:
A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss
by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
Genre: Nonfiction
Published: June 9, 2026
Page Count: 384 pages
Summary:
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.
A great thinning of the skies is under way. There are three billion fewer birds in North America than half a century ago. Five hundred million fewer in Europe. Seventy-three million fewer in Britain. Worldwide, almost 50 per cent of bird species are in decline. That which was once called 'common' is becoming rare: the 'common eider' is now in the same global conservation category as the jaguar. Dawns and springs are quieter; the air, emptier. An ancient avian orchestra is falling silent. An almost unimaginable abundance has been lost.
THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky.
Pages 56-57
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The Book of Birds is everything that we bird-y folk love: Information. Illustrations. Beauty. Cleverness. Wonder. And, of course, birds.
It's a book of birds, told in magnificent poetry-prose, depicted with magnificent illustrations.
It's a field guide organized by the wonders of birds: their nests, their eggs, their beaks, their songs, their feathers, their flights, and their migrations. The book highlights fifty bird species that were once common and are now less common.
If you are already in love with birds, you will come away from this book feeling obsessed with birds.
I lingered over this book for three months. I did not want to get to the end.
The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.
Do you prefer writing long, detailed reviews or quick, punchy ones? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee-Addicted Writer)
I write review for myself. I like to make notes about books, list a quote or two, and remind myself of the plot or main ideas.
