At the Bodleian Libraries this summer, Wonder of Birds is an exhibition of beautiful books, illustrations and a moving exploration of humanity’s relationship with birds, filled equally with awe, memory, creativity and even grief.
Curated by Antonia Harrison and inspired by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s newly published The Book of Birds, the exhibition looks at 49 bird species now on Britain’s amber or red conservation lists. Running throughout is the question, rather than “What is that bird?” but “Who is that bird?”
The exhibition is arranged around seven “wonders” of birds: nest, egg, beak, song, feather, flight and migration. Rare manuscripts, scientific archives, field guides, artworks and sound installations are brought together in a series of treasure-filled cases.
This specimen is on loan courtesy of Oxford University Museum of Natural History
One of the exhibition’s emotional centrepieces is a surviving egg of the extinct Great Auk. Only around 75 Great Auk eggs remain worldwide, and seeing one in person is rather moving - fragile, speckled and silent, representing a species driven to extinction by human exploitation.
George Edwards, Gleanings of Natural History, vol 2, London 1760
Nearby sits another ghost from the natural world, the Dodo. George Edwards’s 1760 illustration was produced after the Dodo had already vanished forever. The exhibition uses the Dodo to explore the “wonder of beaks” - those extraordinary tools that can cut, probe, build, tear, sift and sing.
Higher still and higher, from the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'To A Skylark', first draft, Livorno 1820
The literary treasures are equally remarkable. One case contains Percy Bysshe Shelley’s handwritten draft of To a Skylark, inspired after hearing the bird while walking in Italy with his wife, Mary. Listening nearby is an immersive soundscape by artist Jason Singh, carrying visitors through skylarks, owls and reed beds from dawn to dusk.
The exhibition does not shy away from uncomfortable truths. Victorian feather fashions, hummingbird displays, egg collecting and caged songbirds reveal how admiration for birds has often tipped into possession and destruction. A feather fan, beautiful but unsettling, stands as a reminder of the “feather frenzy” that helped inspire the founding of the RSPB.
Originally made by indigenous Canadians, Oscar Wilde bought this fan in 1882, then later gave it to the socialite Elizabeth, Lady Lewis.
Yet there is hope too. Conservation stories run quietly throughout the exhibition: white-tailed eagles soaring again over Britain, osprey populations recovering, campaigns for swift bricks in new housing, and researchers uncovering new mysteries of migration and birdsong.
The Wonder of Birds shifts between science and poetry, archive and emotion. It reminds us that birds are not simply wildlife woven into memory, mythology, language and daily life.
And as today’s skies grow quieter, the exhibition asks us not only to marvel at birds, but also to consider what we stand to lose without them.
The Wonder of Birds is at the Treasury, Weston Library, Oxford, until 3 January 2027.
