A great thinning of the skies is underway. Around 50 percent of bird species are in decline worldwide. Our dawns are quieter each year than the last, and 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. Inspired by the classic bird-books with which the authors grew up, The Book of Birds is a field guide with a difference: It aims to show its readers how to identify birds, but also how to identify with them. With the great beauty and exuberance they brought to The Lost Words and The Lost Spells , Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris together conjure the unique spirit of nearly fifty once-common species, from avocet to yellowhammer, kestrel to kingfisher, skylark to nightingale. Lyrically and playfully, 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.

Set among this dazzling flock of species are sections celebrating the "Seven Wonders" that together make up the everyday miracle of birds: nest, egg, beak, song, feather, flight, and migration. The Book of Birds is a love letter to the great variety and wild mysteries of birdlife, and a clarion call to halt their rapid depletion from our skies.