Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’ guide to 49 threatened British birds wins Wainwright book of the year

The Book of Birds is a twist on classic field guides from the creators of bestseller The Lost Words

The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, an illustrated guide to Britain’s threatened bird species, has been named as the Wainwright prize book of the year.

Meanwhile, the prize’s children’s book of the year award went to Otherlands: An Illustrated Journey Through Earth’s Lost Worlds by Thomas Halliday, illustrated by Gavin Scott.

The Book of Birds features 49 species of declining or endangered birds, with text by Macfarlane alongside artwork by Morris. It’s a “twist on the classic field guides that inspired both authors, evoking the spirit and poetry of birds from avocet to yellowhammer”, wrote Patrick Barkham in a Guardian interview with the author-illustrator pair in May.

“There are three billion fewer birds in North America than 50 years ago; 600 million fewer in Europe,” said Macfarlane at the time. “Our skies are thinner, our springs quieter. This is a savage loss. We wanted, in paint and word, to pull birds back into focus and splendour – and warn against their vanishing.”

Macfarlane and Morris previously collaborated on the bestselling title The Lost Words, which was a response to a group of nature-related words, including acorn and wren, being removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary because children were using them infrequently. The book was shortlisted for the 2018 prize. The following year, Macfarlane won the prize with his book Underland.

Along with its two overall winners, the Wainwright prize, which celebrates the best nature and conservation writing published in the UK, announced four further category winners: Ancient: Reviving the Woods That Made Britain by Luke Barley (nature writing), The Savage Landscape by Cal Flyn (conservation writing), The Danger of Small Things by Caryl Lewis (children’s fiction) and The Great Bear by Annie Booker (picture books). Macfarlane and Morris had topped the illustrative books category, while Halliday and Scott won in the children’s nonfiction category, before both books went on to be named overall winners.

Each of the category winners receive £500 each, while the overall winners receive an additional £2,500 each.

“As environmental and social challenges grow ever more urgent, it’s inspiring to see writers using their voices to deepen our connection with the natural world,” said prize director Alastair Giles.

The prize was founded in 2013 by Frances Lincoln and the Alfred Wainwright estate. Previous winners include James Rebanks, Merlin Sheldrake and Chloe Dalton, who took home last year’s book of the year award for Raising Hare, about rescuing a leveret during the pandemic.