Interview with Killian Mullarney

// Domen Stanič & Tilen Basle

“Killian Mullarney is considered one of the foremost bird artists of our time and an authority on the subject of bird identification. Most famously he has been deeply involved since the very beginning in the creation of the Collins Bird Guide. He was a member of the Irish Rarities Committee from 1980 to 2008, serves as an identification consultant to some of the leading European birding publications and is regularly asked to assist rarities committees around the world with the assessment of records. His illustrations have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including the Sound Approach books. He lives in Wexford, Ireland.”

First of all thanks Killian for accepting our invitation to have this interview. It means a lot for our small birding and ornithological community in Slovenia to have the opportunity to exchange a chat with you and present it to our readers. Most of them will be very familiar with the masterpiece in bird identification you co-authored, the Collins Bird Guide. In 2025 we are launching the first Slovene edition of the Collins, so this is a perfect time to talk about the book and its early beginnings.

Regarding the creation of the Collins Bird Guide you were in the team with Lars Svensson and Peter J. Grant right from the beginning (as the only illustrator at that time). As you noticed, in Slovenia we call this field guide simply “the Collins”, because until now, we used to have only the English book. Some older birders also call it also “the Svennsson”. Can you describe the initial steps in the creation of this book and the names behind it?

The English publisher Collins initially commissioned the creation of this field guide, but after four and a half years abandoned it, because it wasn’t happening quickly enough. Around that time Peter J. Grant died and so, from then on it was just Lars Svensson and me. We had to persuade Bonniers, a Swedish publisher, to continue with it, which fortunately they did. They are rather small, but excellent publishers. And so the “Collins” Bird Guide was originally published in Swedish (Fågelguiden: Europas och Medelhavsområdets fåglar i fält) in 1999. In the same year Collins then translated the book to English. So I would almost prefer it to be known as the “Bonniers” rather than the “Collins”, because they gave it a lifeline, which if they had not done, the book would never have appeared.

Tell us about the motivation behind starting a new book like this one. Did you know at that time you were about to create the most popular birding book in history?

Absolutely not! I feel we were really lucky at the time. To be honest, while working on the book I didn’t think too much about what the book might become, I just thought about how we would finish it. Because obviously it was quite a big project. And when I was originally approached by Collins, it was a very attractive idea to work on a European guide and especially to work with Lars Svensson and Peter Grant, both of whom were very well known and probably the two top ornithologists on identification at that time. But I was a little bit concerned about it nevertheless. At the time I had done some travel, but I didn’t have nearly enough and I really didn’t want to illustrate birds that I hadn’t seen in the field. What bird artists had to do in the past was going to museums to make drawings from prepared skins. But that doesn’t appeal to me at all. My generation were so fortunate to have for the first time really good telescopes, really good optical equipment. We could see birds in the field far better than before. And we also had easier travel opportunities than previous generations. So the idea of illustrating a book based on observation of museum skins was just a nonstarter for me. So I think we spent two years just discussing the project, just trying to get some framework before we all agreed to do it.

So that started in 1983 and we had several meetings, while in 1985 we signed contracts. But then, of course, it was supposed to take five years. And I was worried about that because five years didn’t seem such a long time. Lars and Peter were writing texts and I was making illustrations. After two or three years we realized that we were way behind whatever schedule there might have been. But the schedule was totally unrealistic because the five year projection for the book was based on a very different kind of book. A field guide that showed one or two figures per bird and the female was hidden behind the male. And this didn’t allow much time for field research and really getting to know these birds.

However, I did believe right from the start that we could produce a book that incorporated a lot of the new knowledge on bird identification that wasn’t featured in any other existing field guide. At that time birdwatchers all over the world were benefiting from having really good optical equipment and gathering a lot of new useful information. This was, of course, pre-Internet, so we didn’t have the level of communication that we have now, but there was still a lot of sharing of ideas. And it was around the early 80s that the idea of having international identification meetings started. The very first one took place in Eilat, Israel. And I was invited to that. I think I was the youngest person there. And there were a few people from North America and Europe. The next year we had another one in Sweden and that’s when I first met Lars Svensson and Lars Jonsson. And then the following year we went to California. During these meetings we sat around in a room with hundreds of slides and discussed identification topics that were of interest to all of us. And of course, none of that information that we were discussing and that was being published in some of the regular journals like British Birds and Dutch Birding, none of that was in the books, the standard field guides. So I think I did feel that if we produced a book that managed to incorporate this new information, it would be very well received and successful. But I’m amazed that 25 years later it’s still regarded as one of the best bird identification books. I think there’s a couple of reasons for that one. Nowadays, publishers really want to do photographic guides because they won’t have to wait 15 years for the plates to be ready. Any publisher who knows of the experience that Collins and Bonnier has had waiting for our book to be finished, would probably think twice before they commissioned artists to do another one. So in a way, I think we’ve frightened them off for a little bit. But I’ve no doubt that the day will come when the Collins will become inferior to some new book. I’m sure it’ll happen. But hopefully not too soon. There are many aspects of the book that are in need of updating. In the last edition we updated some plates, but there’s so much more that needs to be done. And I really want to concentrate on that in the coming years.

The main motivation behind you starting this big project was also the lack of really good bird guides at your time. Which one was considered at that time the best bird field guide? Can you describe us the process of development of the early field guides?

Well, there were certainly some good books, but the main field guide was the “Peterson”, which was conceived in the 1950s by Roger Tory Peterson. And, you know, it had, for example only two gull plates with no standing gulls and no colour. It was still amazing what Peterson achieved at that time. Then in 1970 came out what we called the “Hamlyn” guide, written by Bertel Brunn and illustrated by Arthur Singer. This was the first guide to have colour plates, opposite text. And that was very exciting when it came out. But by the end of the 70s and beginning of 80s we were all really learning so much and we had got used to the fact that many of the more difficult identification information were just not covered at all in this book. And the same was true for another classic of the time, the “Heinzel” guide from 1972 (by Hermann Heinzel, R.S.R. Fitter and John Parslow). At the same time there was some very new and useful knowledge on bird identification being developed, but that was only featured in papers or specialised books (like Flight identification of European raptors for example).
I think the books that made the biggest difference to me, at least at this time, were Lars Jonsson’s illustrated guides. These first came out as small, slim guides with different habitats and they were a revelation. I think Jonsson was the first artist to illustrate birds as he saw them in life through a telescope. Before that, illustrations were rather formal and not very evocative or with not so much life going on. Whereas Lars Jonsson conveyed the beauty of the birds, the individual character and how it move, as well as the habitat. Later Jonsson’s books were combined into a single field guide (Birds of Europe with North Africa and the Middle East) that came out six or seven years after we already started working on our book. But Jonsson’s approach is rather different to ours. He really celebrates the beauty of the birds and the figures are big. Whereas I think that our book it’s a little bit more academic: we try to get all of the plumages included and deal with everything rather systematically. So it’s a different kind of book. But I would always have recommended Jonsson’s book, because there’s no other book as beautiful as this.

Before starting to draw birds, it is important for you to see them in the field. Do you also help yourself with museum specimen and photographs when you make drawings? Can you describe the process of illustration for a field guide? This has probably changed also in time…

Yes, the process has certainly changed. I started out drawing birds seriously in the mid 70s, when I was around 18 years old. At that time, even if you could afford a very good camera, they still didn’t have the reach to make good photographs at larger distances. And most birds we saw were further away rather than closer. So the telescope was the most important piece of equipment. And I did discover very early on that if I spent time drawing a bird directly from life, not from memory, but directly while watching it, that it was hugely beneficial for my learning. The finished drawing was not so important, but rather the process of looking and asking yourself questions: what’s going on with the plumage of a particular bird and where? Doing so I trained myself to analyse and look at birds. For that reason I developed a very keen interest in tricky birds, for example in the differences between Little Stint versus Semipalmated Sandpiper. And because I had trained myself to look at these things, when I saw my first Semipalmated Sandpiper, I could immediately see some features that instantly made a difference. Whereas if my contemporaries, my friends weren’t drawing and looking, it was very difficult for them to get as much information from an encounter. So field sketching was extremely important for me and I did a lot of sketching when I travelled or even locally. And so when it came to planning a plate, a finished plate, my first resource was relying on field sketches and the experience I had while looking at that bird. So that would have given me some familiarity.

But of course photographs were also extremely important, however they were so scarce and difficult to find at that time. Each photograph was like gold dust, especially if it was a rare bird or something that was very seldom photographed, like a juvenile Black-throated Diver for example. I would collect those photographs. Anything that was special or unusual, I would either cut it out or make a note of where it was. Photographs have later become increasingly important as a source of reference, to the extent that now I’m going straight to the photographs, I might not even have many sketches. But I still very much appreciate the training I got from sketching in the field. And I try and keep it up, even though it’s sometimes very difficult. The cameras we have now are so seductive. You can photograph everything, even distant birds. And you can take hundreds, thousands of photographs. Sometimes it’s quite difficult to just put the camera away and do it the old way – sketching. But I do try and keep practice of that, because ultimately it benefits my understanding of birds. And sometimes it’s funny that it’s not until I sketch something that I realise what’s going on with some feature. Because when you’re just looking at it without doing anything, you can be a little bit too relaxed and you’re not looking critically. But when it comes to putting something down on paper, then you have to keep looking and look a bit more carefully. Sometimes that’s when certain confusing issues become suddenly very clear. The thing is that the drawings don’t have to be artistically of high standard for the observer to really benefit, because it just means you’ve looked, you’ve registered something.

For illustrating a field guide, especially nowadays it also helps to be very familiar with photographs. I spent a huge amount of time looking at photographs, not just my own, but from everywhere. It’s amazing to consider how much is available now, compared with 30 or 40 years ago. If you wanted to find a photograph of a See-see Partridge for example, you had no chance. But now there are thousands online. So yes, I regard looking carefully at photographs as also a very useful supplement. Looking at the bird in the field gives you a special kind of experience, but the study of photographs is really important too.

It took you almost 15 years to create the first edition of the Bird Guide, for which you also invited a second artist, Dan Zetterstrom to join the team. How did you choose who was going to illustrate what? Was this based on your personal knowledge, interest, or by some favourite bird group?

That was a very painful process, because for the few years when I was the only artist, and of course I had my favourite groups, I sketched out many layouts. I tried to do as many different groups, including owls, many shorebirds and ducks and possibly some birds of prey. But there were a few families that at that time I wasn’t so keen on. For example game birds. Now I actually love game birds, but at the time, not so much. For me they weren’t terribly exciting, because they never go anywhere, they just sit there. Birds of prey would have been very exciting, but I would have been conscious of living in Ireland, where we just had a few Hen Harriers – there was nothing bigger than that! Of course, I saw birds of prey when I travelled, but I didn’t have the everyday contact with interesting birds of prey that someone living on the continent might have. So I was very keen to attract Dan to the project, because I’d met Dan in Israel once or twice, and I knew that we had a very similar approach, that we were both very keen birdwatchers who had an ability to draw. We both had a very similar keen interest in identification and in representing birds as you see them in life. And that’s not something that could be said about every bird artist, because many bird artists want to paint Kingfishers and nice landscapes and do stunning paintings. But many of them have no real interest in the more difficult aspects of identifying young gulls or eagles or whatever. But I knew Dan did, so I was very confident that him and I would be able to produce work that was similar.

But of course when it came to dividing the species list, there were some groups that I really was looking forward to painting. But I couldn’t just give Dan all the ones that I didn’t want, because it wouldn’t have been fair. There were for example the wheatears, the chats, which I really loved. But of course, Dan loved those too, because we used to see a lot of them in Israel. And so in the end, we just went through the list, and we divided it more or less equally. So Dan had some very nice ones, and I had some very nice ones. And we both had some that were perhaps not so exciting. I mean, none of them is boring, but some of them were maybe not quite so exciting as the others. Then I saw what Dan did with some of these plates, his Phylloscopus are so beautiful, better than mine. And I think it was really exciting to see his approach to the job.

A lot of people greatly admire the ability of some to sketch wildlife in the field and make accurate drawings of nature. Do you think this is an ability that anyone can develop with practice or is it an innate skill?

Well, I have a very clear answer to that question. I believe everybody, without exception has the ability to draw quite well. So the basic ability to draw a shape that approximately represents what you see – I think everybody can do it. There’s a very interesting book, it’s called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. She and other people interested in drawing discovered that a lot of children who have no inhibitions about drawing when they’re very young, stop around the age of 11, 12 or 13. They stop, they no longer get the enjoyment of drawing. And the theory is that it happens at the age when the so called left side of the brain (the more rational side of the brain), becomes very critical of childish drawing. And in a way, kids around that age become very discouraged. And after six months or a year of this inner voice saying it’s no good, they stop. And then they think: “Well, I was never very good at drawing”. But this book explores a number of simple exercises you can do, that are designed to in a way, “disable” that critical voice. So people who do these exercises get encouraged beyond that difficult phase. And then they realise they can draw. And I have a friend, a very good friend of mine, who’s a birdwatcher, really keen to draw, but he couldn’t draw. Then he got this book and he was very disciplined, doing all of the exercises for weeks and months. Within a week, he could see an improvement and after six months, he was producing really beautiful drawings. I mean, drawings that I would have been very happy with in my notebook. And it was just a question of concentrating and allowing himself to see. And he employed these little tricks to maybe prevent this interference from the left side of his brain. That’s why it’s called Drawing on the right side of the brain, because you’re doing exercises that really suit the right side of the brain, which is the more romantic or more aesthetic side.
So I really think there’s a huge amount of evidence that everyone can draw if they’re given the right encouragement and support. I don’t think it’s an innate special skill. I’m sure there are innate skills, and some people have perhaps an advantage for some reason or other, but we all have the basic ability to draw and sketch. And I think it’s really beneficial if we use it and practice. Let me add one thing, as evidence that practice is the most important: if I go two weeks without drawing, which sometimes I can’t avoid, I feel like a beginner again, I have to almost relearn again for at least the first few hours, the first day.

Digital cameras, as well as bird identification apps are very popular among the younger generation of birdwatchers. How do you look at the recent development of modern technologies in birding? What advice would you give to younger birdwatchers?

No matter what any of us do, identification practices are going to evolve. They always do. They keep moving according to circumstance. But I do worry a little bit about the young generation of birdwatchers now, who most of them will have good cameras. Some of them in some parts of the world are not using any books. They just use a Merlin app or some equivalent. And there’s never been less incentive to look. Now you just have to take a shot, put it into your app, and you’ve got the result. And I think birdwatchers who follow that method are missing something. They’re missing a huge aspect of the familiarity that you gain when you really give yourself time to look. But that’s their choice and some of them will never know that there’s another way. Because if they look around, that’s what everybody else is doing: everybody is taking photographs all the time. The photographs, of course, are evidence of what they’ve seen. And in some ways, having a photograph at least removes doubt. Whereas when I was young, people would report things, and there were no photographs. So you had to figure out if it was a reliable identification. And often they weren’t. We were all a little bit prone to imagination and getting overexcited. Whereas now, people are expected to produce a photograph pretty quickly. But photography on the other hand can demand all of your concentration just to think about exposure and focus or framing and so on. So there can be very little mental energy left for looking at the bird. So yeah, I would definitely try to encourage all young birdwatchers, to at least try drawing something. Of course it’s good to start with something that is cooperative, like a sleeping bird or something that’s big, and can be seen clearly or it’s not going to fly away after two minutes. If young birdwatchers discover the feeling of satisfaction and excitement of producing a drawing based on just what they saw (not on someone else’s photograph) that’s a very exciting feeling. Of course nowadays this can be really difficult to achieve, because there’s so many other distractions for kids. Nowadays, it’s very difficult to put the phone away…

I guess some subjects are more difficult to illustrate than others. What birds or species give you most problems when illustrating? Are there some “difficult ones” for you to make? And do you have any favourite group you like to study and sketch?

Yeah, I do have some that are more difficult for me. Fortunately for the Collins Bird Guide Dan has already done all the birds of prey. I think that would be a challenging group for me if I was to draw them. Of course I have to paint the occasional bird of prey, but I don’t have to do it in such a large scale as Dan. And I think if I was suddenly told to illustrate a book on birds of prey of Europe, that would be quite a challenge, because like with waders, gulls and terns, there’s a lot of age variation, a lot of detail that really has to be right. So it’s not more difficult, but it is more time consuming. On the other hand, the ones that I really like to do are gulls, terns, shorebirds and seabirds, as well as ducks. These are the ones I see more often. I think the ones I would find most difficult to do, would be birds that I don’t have much opportunity to study in life.

When you go to the field, is a sketching notebook with you all the time? Do you usually go birding and sketch only if there’s something interesting or rather make some dedicated excursions just for drawing?

It depends, but I do always bring a notebook and a pencil with me. Unless I accidentally forget it. And I try to do some sketching every day, even if I don’t always manage. But of course it’s more and more difficult to resist the seduction of the camera. But because I know what I don’t get from photographs, I kind of understand that the process of sketching, even if the sketches are not anything special, is very important for me and that I should do that. So I always regard the opportunity to sketch as something important.
But sometimes I would go out, knowing very specifically what I want to look at, for example a Wigeon in the autumn, because I want to understand what’s going on. But a lot of the time, I just go out and if I see something of interest (it could be a common bird or rare one) I’ll take some notes and sketch.

You live in Ireland. Where do you usually go birding? What’s your favourite habitat or which type of habitat are you more familiar with?

Because I live in the southeast corner of Ireland, I have coastline in both directions, south and east, within 10-15 minute drive from home. By their very nature, the coastal lagoons and wetlands are very bird rich. And that’s where I go most of the time. We don’t have very good forest. Most of the forest is monoculture with very dense spruce, which isn’t very good really. Of course, you need to go there for some birds. But most of the habitats I visit are coastal, and I very much like looking at migrating seabirds, such as Manx Shearwaters, Gannets and skuas which can be passing in big numbers. I’m also very keen on wildfowl; we have a big reserve here, where there are a lot of geese. We have about 4000-5000 Greenland White-fronted Geese, plus we get some Pink-footed and Barnacle Geese. There’s one particular lake called Tacumshin lake, which it’s probably the best place in Europe for rare North American shorebirds. So that’s a really exciting place to be in August and September.

Apart from the Collins Bird Guide, can we find your work also in other field guides or books? And do you have any upcoming projects to be published in the near future? Any new updates of the Collins?

Yes, one of the major work I did was also painting the plates for the Sound Approach books, if you know them. For example Petrels night and day, written by Magnus Robb, was a classic in this series. At the moment, I’m working on a new Sound approach book with Magnus, dedicated to shorebirds, although that’s been going on for quite a few years and I have to try and finish it now. The sounds will be a very important part of the book. So that’s going to be taking up most of my time now. And yes, it hasn’t really started yet, but I’m very keen to start work on a fourth edition of the Collins Bird Guide. It could be five or six years away, I don’t know. There are so many aspects that I think can be improved. So I’d very much like to do that.

Killian, thank you very much for dedicating some of your precious time for this interview. We are sure our readers will appreciate what you’ve shared with us today, especially in regard to the interesting history behind the creation of Collins Bird Guide. Next time we will flip through the book, we will certainly look on it with slightly different eyes!

I’m really delighted that you went through the trouble of translating Collins Bird Guide to Slovene. I don’t know how many you would expect to sell, but given the very small size of Slovenia, it probably won’t be a huge number. Nevertheless it’s really great that you decided to do it. So thanks a lot guys and very best of luck with the remainder of the project!