Morris and Macfarlane’s book connects our hearts to the wild world of birds

If anyone asks me where my love of nature began, I always mention books.

- Nicola Chester

Of course, there was also the outdoors, but books and the art in them percolated a kind of magic, meaning and wonder from the natural world. This fed my imagination and curiosity, and proved a lifelong connection between the wild world out there and my inner life.

Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, creators of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, generation-defining works in nature-book terms, spent seven years writing and illustrating The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss (Hamish Hamilton). It’s a treasure for our times. A big, beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking, often playful and ultimately hopeful compendium of 49 British birds we’re in danger of losing forever.

It was inspired by those illustrated bird books and nature guides from their (and my) childhood, including The Observer's Books of Birds and the Reader’s Digest field guides, full of beautifully observed paintings. What remains in us of those books is love for nature, a still-fresh wonder at the world and horror at its silencing; grief at its dimming.