mammals of Essex

I am now the happy owner of a newly published guide to the Mammals of Essex.  One of its authors came to speak to the beekeepers earlier in the year.  We'd formed the impression that he was going to talk about water voles, on which he is rather an expert, and were initially confused when he set out to cover the entire mammalian waterfront in the space of less than an hour, but it was a very good talk, and when he took contact details afterwards for those wanting to know when his book came out, I stuck my name and email address on the list.  Lo, the book is now out, offered to friends and supporters at a modest pre-publication discount, and today his co-author delivered my signed copy in person.  Now that's service.  He said that he had friends living close by and was doing a mini delivery run, but I was most grateful, having expected to pick up my copy from the first author's parents at some future beekeeping event.

The book is almost but not quite self published, produced under the auspices of The Essex Field Club with financial support from other local natural history groups, but I don't suppose the field club runs to a professional editor or much in the way of technical support.  Digital technology is a wonderful liberating force for books.  Anybody who has an idea for a book and access to some finance can turn out something that looks thoroughly professional and market it via a website.  If it's a dud idea then their spare bedroom may be left stuffed with piles of yellowing unsold stock for the next twenty years, but the position of the publishing industry as gatekeepers to what can ever see the light of day in book form is being steadily eroded.  Given the way the big publishers keep merging with each other to get even bigger, and ever more unwilling to take financial risks, it's just as well that the publishing world is renewing itself at the bottom.  The big boys may not be interested in specialist subjects, but the micro-publishers are doing it for themselves.

Each mammal gets a few pages, with photographs, a distribution map with red dots for each grid square where the species has been recorded, information on the creature's diet and habits and whether the population is growing or declining.  Flicking through I saw a diagram of a mole's network of tunnels, a table of the number of deer taken from Hatfield Forest by Henry III, an analysis of the fish bones retrieved from samples of otter droppings, and a list of tips to tell stoats and weasels apart.  All good useful stuff.  I was initially disappointed that there didn't seem to be any photographs of droppings, since those and the fact that plants have been eaten are two of the main clues that wildlife has been visiting the garden, but then discovered that these were included in the chapter on field signs at the back.

I think the chapter on whales is pushing it a bit, since I'm not sure that one sighting ever of a killer whale off the coast qualifies it as Mammal of Essex, and the book won't help me work out which bats are in the garden.  For that I'd have to purchase and learn to use a bat detector.  If I ever see a racoon about the place I shall be extremely surprised, though I suppose it is mildly intriguing that a dead wallaby was found on the approach road to Harwich Parkestone Quay in 2001.  But the vast majority of it is all good detailed stuff about animals that we might easily be very close to, and might learn to spot or at least identify the signs of their presence.  Copies are available from the author's website.  Could be just the thing if you are looking for a Christmas present for a nature loving Essex resident.