I blog primarily about the wildlife that I photograph, and naturally enough I can only photograph the wildlife that I find But I don't see animals in proportion to their abundance. Many people conclude that a species is common because they see it often, when in reality it's just bolder or more daylight-active than its wild neighbours.

But who out there is always slipping under the blog radar? I've been number-crunching today and startled myself with the outcome I do not have data for the North Downs specifically, so I've had to work with the figures for the whole of England. *Population statistics for wild mammals - Tracking Mammals Partnership; weight data - mean values from Blitz's Mammal Field Guide; Livestock data from various professional online resources
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Overview

150,849,449 - England's estimated wild mammal population
72,806,719 kg - the approx. total weight of England's wild mammals (I'll explain why I worked this out in a moment!)

Bats
English species - 16
Population - 2,469,350
Proportion by number - 1.6%
Proportion by weight - 0.02%

I don't recommend handling bats because a) there are some health risks and b) they're protected, but these ones were being examined by an expert as part of a bat monitoring programme in Sussex This is a Bechstein's bat, one of Britain's rarest mammals:



And this, a brown long-eared bat.


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Carnivores
English species - 9
Population - 975,984
Proportion by number - 0.65%
Proportion by weight - 5.4%

Our carnivores command a disproportionate percentage of the total wildlife "weight" primarily because badgers are pretty stocky creatures, and they are relatively numerous. As we all know, badgers are much better at hiding themselves than foxes but I did at least see some tracks today


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Insectivores
English species - 5
Population - 52,850,000
Proportion by number - 35%
Proportion by weight - 4%

This is where things started to get rather interesting Even though they make up a tiny fraction of the total by weight, insectivores outnumber humans in England! Mostly, that's down to the extreme abundance of just two species - moles and common shrews. But moles are usually underground, and shrews are easily overlooked except when their hyper-fast metabolisms overwhelm them, and their tiny bodies are found on rural tracks.I've no photos of living insectivores, but I hope that most people know what a mole hill looks like, anyhow
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Rodents
English species - 12
Population - 69,173,500
Proportion by number - 45.8%
Proportion by weight - 6.2%

Most rodents in England are wood mice, bank voles and field voles (together, they outnumber grey squirrels by over 54 million). I've missed off a potential 13th species: the ship rat, which was driven to virtual extinction when its brown rat cousin arrived on these shores. For the record, whatever the press says, brown rats are only the eighth most common wild mammal in Britain, and vastly outnumbered by the seven species above them in the list.


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Ungulates
English species - 9
Population - 298,365
Proportion by number - 0.2%
Proportion by weight - 16.5%

Our native hoofed mammals have had a very chequered history; the wisent and tarpan are extinct, and the red deer is now hybridisating with introduced sika deer. Several other species have escaped from zoos, leaving us with a curiously international large mammal selection I have many photos of roe deer of course, but I thought it would be more interesting to post these pictures of dubious quality from my East Anglian days. This is a somewhat uncommon view of genuinely wild red deer in eastern England:



And this (believe it or not!) is a Reeve's muntjac, a Chinese species that has spread rapidly throughout the East Anglian peninsula after escaping from Woburn. It is hardly bigger than a border collie.


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Lagomorphs (Rabbits and Hares)
English species - 3
Population - 25,082,250
Proportion by number - 16.6%
Proportion by weight - 67.7%

...and by this point, I was so startled by the figures that I wondered for a moment if my spreadsheet was malfunctioning European rabbits come second to common shrews in the mammal population list, but they're so much larger than our other hyper-abundant species that they make up fully 63.9% of total mammal weight. Put that another way: for every 100 kg of mammal that is out there, almost 64 kg is rabbit!


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Livestock

Twenty-four million rabbits is certainly a lot...no matter how you count it! But I think it's worth noting that none of our wild mammals compare in biomass to the number of livestock in Britain. I've excluded their populations and weights from the above figures, because they'd just knock everything (...except rabbits) off the page.



- 10,000,000 cattle (3,998,000 tonnes)
- 30,000,000 sheep (3,720,000 tonnes)
- 5,000,000 pigs (450,000 tonnes - rather approximate because many are not adult)
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English wildlife highs and lows

1. Common shrew - 26,000,000
2. Rabbit - 24,500,000
3. Mole - 19,750,000
4. Wood mouse - 19,500,000
5. Bank vole - 17,750,000
//
21. Red fox - 195,000
//
50. Wild boar - 500?
51. Feral goat - 315
52. Ferret - 200
53. Feral sheep - 150
54. Pine marten - <100

I'm not a great fan of reducing everything to symbolism, but if I had to choose just a few wild things to represent the North Downs, I think they would be...

Mammal
Red fox



...well, of course

I nearly crashed into this fox this morning We were both on the same extremely narrow farmland trail, heading in opposite directions, and only became aware of each other when the gap was measured in a few tens of feet. The fox, evidently as startled as I was, studied me, turned about, stared some more, and then vanished noiselessly into the undergrowth.

Bird
Nuthatch (photo from 2007)



Tree
European beech



Fungus
King Alfred's Cakes



The story goes that King Alfred was so troubled by the political woes of his kingdom that he put on a disguise and went to stay with some old widow. Unfortunately, in his distraction, he overcooked the women's cakes. Which presumably ended up looking as blackened and cracked as these amazing Ascomyceteae fungi that are found all over our beechwoods.

Flower
Greater yellow rattle



The parasite of grasses that provides space for so many other species. The seedpods really do rattle in the late summer wind. Most of the British population of this plant is in the North Downs.

Fruit
Bramble (blackberries will soon come! )



Invertebrate
Roman snail Helix pomatia



This is by far the largest British snail (up to four inches in length). It is rare - unfortunately it has ended up on IUCN's Red List of threatened species - but the chalky slopes of the Downs are its English stronghold, and I see them reasonably often. Two this morning, actually

Reptile
Grass snake - no photo

We have a few surviving grass snakes and slow worms, but overall our reptiles are virtually extinct (most likely due to the vast number of free-roaming cats around here )

Amphibian
Common toad



Not doing too well either, but I thought that they symbolised the notoriously dry Downs more than frogs or newts because they seem to wander further from water sources.

Domestic animal
Horse



They are not exactly wild, but they interact with wildlife often enough to warrant a mention And they don't always obey fences Yes, the filly has escaped from her paddock again! This time, instead of meekly slipping back through the fence, she came trotting over to me and sniffed Leila with considerable curiosity. I wondered for a moment if she actually intended to follow me home! I'm not sure what the foxes would say if she took up residence in my garden...