The previous Blog Post discussed some of the books I've been tweeting on Bluesky about, in response to a tweet from Martin Wood a few weeks ago. That Blog Post was focused on the Bird books in my library. In this Blog Post, I will look at some of the other wildlife books in my library.
Before I got into Birds at the start of my teens, I had already been interested in Frogs and Butterflies for several years. Finally, that expanded to include other Amphibians and Reptiles, when I finally saw a few more species beyond Common Frog.
Another wildlife group that I became interested in about the same time that I got interested in Birds were Mammals. I've now found this really good Mammal handbook for the UK.
Mammals are one of the groups that I've tried to identify on foreign trips, but with varying results depending on the country. One of my first trips outside of the Western Palearctic was to Kenya in 1987. I returned three years later as part of a four month African trip, visiting Kenya, Rwanda, a corner of Zaire, Uganda, Madagascar and Southern Africa. We had a chance to identify African Mammals as there were these good in their day books on African Mammals. But we had nothing on the Madagascan Lemurs where we had to rely on the researchers we met and some of the first local guides, they were training.
The reality is there are still a number of countries I've visited in recent years, where there still isn't a good Mammal field guide. But times have moved on and there is now the Handbook of the Mammals of the World. The only problem is I cannot justify spending the money to buy the eight volumes. But now there is a concise budget version of all the Mammal species, along with range maps.
In the late 90s, the Poole Harbour Birders started the first of five annual ferry trips from Portsmouth to Bilboa through the Bay of Biscay. The first was designed for Seabirds and Cetaceans. I returned annually for the Cetaceans, with the Seabirds being a bonus. I had seen a few Cetaceans by this point, but we had struggled on foreign trips due to the lack of a decent Cetacean guide. So, it was a really breath of fresh air when Mark Carwardine published this excellent Cetacean guide, which was packed with lots of easily readable information. I was starting to get hooked on Cetaceans.
Anybody who has regularly read my Blog Posts, will realise that I have a strong passion for Cetaceans, which I consider to be 'Honorary Penguins". My interest in Cetaceans kicked up a couple of notches during the seven week expedition trip from Ushuaia to Holland via South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena, Ascension Island and Cape Verde. I discovered the Marine Mammals of the World handbook in the Plancius's library and immediately bought it when I returned home. I now have the digital version on my laptop and mobile. While the taxonomy has moved on in the last decade for a handful of species, it is still by far the best Cetacean guide in my opinion. There are newer pocket field guides, but they quickly flounder on some of the less common species of Cetacean.
In my early days at Southampton University, some of the Birders tried to get into Moths. This was hard work in those early days, as my two volume guide, was crap. However, things picked up when we bumped into John Chainey, who was living in Brockenhurst in those days. John has an amazing knowledge of Moths and helped get me started on Moths. Sadly, I'm rusty now I don't get the time to run my Moth trap. All this was helped by the first of the decent Moth books.
About twenty years ago, I bought this book to try to get into Dragonflies. It is still a decent field guide, albeit the ranges will be out of date these days and some of the newer established species aren't covered.
As I've seen new Insect field guides published, I've tried to buy them, so I had a better chance of identifying species I bump into. There are still some major insect groups that still need a good book, starting with a field guide to UK Wasps. A Lewington illustrated book would be fantastic.
Another strand of Bird and Wildlife books that I've enjoyed reading have been the travel diaries of some of the early naturalists. Everybody would immediately think of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. Personally, I found that a hard read.
I enjoyed the Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace a lot more. Not only was it an easier book to read, it also covers how he developed his ideas on evolution. It was only when he sent a write up of these ideas to Darwin, that Darwin rushed to write up his own observations on this topic, that he had avoided doing for many years. Both published their ideas at the same Royal Society meeting. Sadly, Wallace didn't have the same standing as Darwin in the class system at the time and today, most UK schoolkids have heard about Darwin, whilst few have heard of Wallace.
I managed to find a few other Victorian explorer travel books over the years. Any Birder who has travelled to Borneo will have heard of Charles Lowe and his gorgeous Hose's Broadbill: which I've been lucky enough to see in Sabah. This is his travel diary.
The next book is a modern twist of those old Victorian explorer's travel books. It is a section of articles from researchers based upon Marion Island. While the Victorians killed Birds and Insects in the name of science, this book includes sections on the largest successful feral Cat eradication program and how the Wildlife recovered following their removal.
Been brought up on the Kent-London borders close to the River Thames, every now and then the name Jeffery Harrison cropped up. He was responsible for setting up the Sevenoaks Nature Reserve, but also was involved in the campaign to clean up the River Thames and with Peter Grant, he documented how the Wildlife returned. Sadly, Thames Water is doing its best to create the conditions for the sequel to this book.
I will end this Blog Post with another of my all-time favourite Bird and Wildlife books. Kakapo Country describes the early work to stop the enigmatic Kakapo from becoming extinct. But as well as describing the start of the recovery program, it looks at many of the other endemic Birds, along with other classic New Zealand species like the Weta and the habitats. It only took me a couple of hours to re-read the book last month, as the text is full of the same lovely paintings as are shown on the front cover.
I've enjoyed tweeting on Bluesky about some of the interesting books in my library and being able to expand on some of the reasons I selected those books in the last two Blog Posts. These are still only a subset of the library. One of the nice benefits has been these tweets have encouraged me to pull some of the non-identification guides off the book shelves and re-read them. Thanks for the inspiration, Martin.