Book cover: "The Roadside Wildlife Book" ... plus skunks

• Title: The Roadside Wildlife Book
• Author: Richard Mabey (1941-present). He also wrote The Unofficial Countryside, which I blogged about in 2021.
• Publisher: Sphere Books Limited, London
• Year: 1978 (first published 1974)
• Pages: 141
• Format: Trade paperback
• Price: 95p in the United Kingdom, £1.04½p in Ireland
• Back cover blurb: "From high-speed motorways to meandering country lanes, roads are an integral part of our modern countryside, and Britain's road verges total half a million acres of land. Now Richard Mabey, top-selling author of FOOD FOR FREE, has compiled a fascinating and informative guide to our roadside wildlife. This book not only give an introduction to the natural history you may encounter on the roads (which could range from migrating toads to gale-blown sea ducks), but also shows how wildlife is adapting to the influence of the dominant mammal, travelling Man."
• Acknowledgments: Mabey notes that Nan Fairbrother's writings, including the 1970 book New Lives, New Landscapes was a key influence. That book is about "planning a humane landscape for a technological society."
• First sentence: The first country road I remember was one my father wheeled me along in a push-chair most Sunday mornings during the last year of the war.
• Last sentences: But as I hope I have shown, leaving your car is not only better for the land. It also gives you a chance to meet the natural world face to face.
• Random excerpt from middle #1: Breckland has a unique collection of plants, some of which grow nowhere else in the British Isles and belong really to the Russian steppes.
• Random excerpt from middle #2: There was a remarkable Noah's Ark operation done on a family of Hertfordshire badgers at Bishop's Stortford on the route of the new M11. They were successfully transplated 50 miles away, in a disused sett.
• Random excerpt from middle #3 (this was written in 1974, remember): An ecologically acceptable vehicle would not just be a "safety" car but an "organic" one, fitting in as far as possible with the needs of all the creatures it has to share space with. Space is a key notion; the ecological car would occupy less than a third of the road space of the modern saloon — 9,000 square inches has been recommended as the maximum. It would be powered by electricity, or some other non-polluting energy source, and would be restricted in its power (and therefore energy consumption), its top speed, and the amount of noise it could make. Ideally it would be automated on trunk roads and only be put back into a human's unsteady hands when it was on a side road and unlikely to meet much other traffic. It is surely not beyond the wit and our car manufacturers — always paraded as the spearhead of British technology — to mass-produce a car of this sort.
• Rating on Goodreads: 3.67 stars (out of 5)
• Contemporary review: In the November 28, 1974, edition of The Guardian, Richard Boston wrote: "Mr Mabey is scrupulously fair in presenting the arguments in favour of the motor car. For people who live in towns the car is a liberator, and the country could for them almost be defined as what can be seen from a car. But there are limits to fairness, and the general tone of the book is polemical. The car is also a great destroyer, both through pollution and means of a more brutally fatal impact. Mabey reckons that two and half million birds are killed on British roads every year, and 1,000 badgers in Somerset alone. As destructive as the car is thoughtless hedge-cutting, especially by means of the flail-type cutter. Ruthless hedge control is not only brutal in the short run but is eventually going to bring about major changes in the look of our landscape."
• 
  Related thoughts: I don't go out on roads too much, and there's not much to stop and see (other than Little Free Libraries) in the middle of the 110-degree desert. But our backyard wildlife here in Florence is interesting. Earlier this year I did my best to assist a pair of hummingbird chicks that left their tiny nest just a little too early. And this morning I was greeted by a green hummingbird that hovered right near my head, reminding me to fill its hanging feeder. But the big thing lately is skunks. This is our second summer of skunks. We had a few babies last summer and I kind of pampered them, because the reality is that skunks in residential areas don't live very long lives. Then, in the late spring of this year, a lone pudgy skunk that I assumed was pregnant started returning regularly to feed. And, hey presto, now we have three or four tiny toddlers that come regularly, including one that isn't at all scared of me. The skunks make it a little trickier to feed the feral cats (Mamacita, Creamsicle, Splash, Meowmix and Gumball), who keep their distance and wait their turn. So I work a little extra in the evenings to make sure they all have enough water and food. Because, like I said, it's 110. In fact, we're entering a stretch of a week or more where it's going to be 112 to 115 daily. Poor critters.