Sunday book review – Atlas of the Mammals of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by Derek Crawley et al.

This is an up-to-date atlas of the distribution of mammals in the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. All such books are fascinating.

The book is well produced and looks attractive. It follows a well-worn path of such books: some information at the front about the scope, history, methods and those involved and then a series of species accounts with a map on the right hand page and a species account on the left.

Mammals are quite a mixed bag aren’t they? Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are mammals, but the species covered here include cetaceans (clearly marine species), loads of rodents (most of which run around in the dark), bats (which usually flit around in the dark) and the rest. I can understand why there is no great effort made to summarise the changes in distribution across these groups and draw any lessons or comparisons, but I wonder what that might have said.

Maybe some sort of synthesis might have commented on the gash in distribution records across the middle of England (or the middle of southern-ish England) from Oxford to The Wash (and yes, I live in that area) for a range of species such as House Mouse, Weasel, Stoat, Brown Rat, Wood Mouse, Harvest Mouse and a few voles. Is this real, do we think, or is it lack of observations submitted? I’m guessing the latter but I’m not sure I’m told anywhere.

The marine maps are interesting and cover, where records exist, the area of the continental shelf and therefore include records from well outside the UK’s Exclusive Economic Area.

I’ve recorded Brown Hares on my Breeding Bird Survey visits this week but I read here that the authors of this atlas only trusted BTO volunteers to be able to identify Mole, Rabbits, Badgers, Foxes and Hedgehogs so despite more data being available they weren’t used. How sensible was that? With what are BTO observers in England and Wales expected to confuse a Brown Hare? Perhaps a Mountain Hare in the Peak District but really? Or perhaps a Rabbit – but then our Rabbit records are allowed in? Seems a bit strange to me.

This atlas is a major step forward in our knowledge of UK mammals but it also shows how far behind birds (and some plants and insects) is the study of mammals in the UK. Considering they have quite a lot going for them, mammals are a somewhat neglected group here. The fragmented and weak nature of NGOs with a mammalian focus surely can’t help. That mixed bag of mammlian species has a very mixed bag of scientific and conservation NGOs looking after them.

But everyone who got together to produce this atlas should take a bow for achieving something good. As with all such atlases, it is something on which to build.

Atlas of the Mammals of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by Derek Crawley, Frazer Coomber, Laura Kubasiewicz, Colin Harrower, Peter Evans, James Waggitt, Bethany Smith, Fiona Matthews and the Mammal Society is published by Pelagic Publishing.

Remarkable Birds by Mark Avery is published by Thames and Hudson – for reviews see here.

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