Congratulations! What does it mean to you to win the Wainwright Prize?
It feels incredible. I don’t understand how the judges can judge the prizes. It’s not something I can do myself. I don’t know how you can compare all of those books.
Just to be on that shortlist — goodness me, with such utter excellence — that’s like winning. So I can’t get my head around it, really. I’ll take the win for the birds, but I don’t feel like it’s better than any of the others.
It’s also particularly strange because I was shortlisted with two books in the same category, so in a way I feel like I’ve both won and lost. Wild Folk is exquisite. It’s a very strange one, really.
The Book of Birds is your third collaboration with Robert Macfarlane. How does that collaboration work?
Robert does the writing and I do the paintings, but while we’re working on the book we’re in constant written conversation with each other.
For each of the 49 species included in the book, he would ask me what my thoughts were on a lapwing, for example, and what my relationship was with a lapwing. I would write to him, and he would thread phrases and things through the words.
What came back was something woven as exquisitely as a nest, really.
You’ve described the book as a field guide “with a difference”. What did you want it to do differently?
When we first conceived of the book, the idea was to write a field guide with a difference. We didn’t so much want a book that was simply about how to identify birds, because the nature of modern life has changed.
What we wanted to do was try to connect people with birds themselves. How to see birds in the light, how to link the human heart to the birds – that was what we were trying to do.
Very early on, I said to Robert, when you look at a bird, don’t say, “What’s that?” You say, “Who’s that?” Because it’s disrespectful to do it any other way. I think it changes the way you think about other living beings that we share the planet with. Part of the problem is seeing other life forms as somehow separate, rather than recognising them as being equal to your own.
The book took seven years to create. Was there a particular moment that stands out or was especially meaningful to you?
It was a really long trip – seven years working on it. When we began, my aim had been to go and meet each of the 49 species, but then we had a global pandemic, so that wasn’t really possible.
What was fortunate for me was that many of the birds came to me. I live in Pembrokeshire, which is rich with seabirds, so a lot of the time I would be on the cliffs looking at fulmars out on a boat, and later, when you could go out, visiting kittiwake colonies. I sketched and sketched.
I also worked from photographs, because I wanted to paint birds in flight. The movement is so swift that the human eye struggles to catch it, but cameras can hold the light of that second in focus.
I also had the privilege of sitting very close to a white-tailed eagle. When you’re that close to that presence — that beak, which is like a meat hook — it really focuses your mind. It’s really important, if you can, when you’re drawing something, to spend some time with it, to be in its presence.
You’ve spoken about the seven “wonders” in the book as well as the bird paintings. How did you approach bringing those passages to life?
For the first six and a half years I did all the birds, because I hadn’t got a clue how I was going to paint the wonders in between.
Robert’s writing for those passages is exquisite. It’s a form of writing I don’t think I’ve witnessed before. It’s prose, but poetry makes you want to speak it aloud. It’s like music – human music.
When I started trying to paint those sections, I realised I needed something else. I found my way to using a medium called shell gold, which is essentially gold that has been ground very, very finely and mixed with gum arabic so you can use it like watercolour.
I was painting on clay boards, which have a really smooth surface, so it’s almost not the colour but the texture that you get. I think that puts the poetry into the images that complement the poetry in the words, and gives the reader a breathing space, I hope.
The audiobook brings the birds’ voices into the experience too. What did you make of that addition?
When we were talking about doing the audiobook, I asked if we could have the voices of the birds in it as well, and whether I could speak some of the words.
I read the Seven Wonders and Robert reads the 49 bird species. But what the incredible sound designer has done is weave the voice and language of the bird through Robert speaking the words from each passage.
Sometimes I forget that it’s human speech. I’m just listening to the interplay of the birds’ language and the human language together, joined. It’s an incredible thing. It’s like nothing I’ve heard before, and it is quite a wonder in itself.
What do you hope readers take away from The Book of Birds?
When I was about eight, I had a book of birds that I loved enormously, and I still have it, although it’s fallen apart now. I hope The Book of Birds can have that kind of life.
It’s just a book. It’s not a children’s book, it’s not an adult book. I’ve seen photos of readers as young as two immersed in it, in the pictures. That’s the strength of pictures. They can’t read the words, but they really get into the pictures and into the wonder of eggs, the different sizes and shapes of them, and all those details.
I really want children to teach their parents the names of the birds, and the other way around. That’s what I hope – that love, that fascination.
It’s kind of about saving birds, but it’s also about saving ourselves, because at the end of the day, we’re the ones who are really endangered. The natural world will get on very nicely without us. But if we can turn things around and have more respect for the lives of others, then we will be doing ourselves a favour.
You’ve painted birds throughout your career, but this is the first time they have taken centre stage. What is it about birds that has always drawn you to them and do you have a favourite?
Birds have always flown through the backgrounds of my paintings. This is the first time they’ve come forward centre stage.
I remember coming into my recognition of self when I first saw small birds moving through hedgerows, realising that there were these bright lives that were not human. I wanted to be a bear when I was young, and I think part of what I love about painting this book is that, in the way I work, I have to kind of become each bird in the book.
By the end, when Robert asked me what bird I would be if I could be any bird, I said, “all birds and every bird.” I don’t think I could choose just one.
The Book of Birds was named the 2026 Wainwright Prize Book of the Year, as well as winning the 2026 Wainwright Prize for Illustrative Books. The judges described it as an “utterly beautiful book to treasure”, praising the exceptional chemistry between Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane.