Behold the ever-timrous harre Already quits the furzy shade, And oer the field, with watchful care, Unseen will nip the sprouting blade. - Samuel Thompson (1766-1816).
Ah, the timorous hare. Even its Latin name, bestowed in 1759 by the great Swedish scientist Carl Linneaus, reflects its watchful nature: Lepus timidus. And it has every reason to be watchful and timid, for people have been trapping and eating hares for thousands of years. Our forbears dined on hare at Mount Sandel near Coleraine, Co Derry, 9,000 years ago. The Irish name for this fleet-footed creature (giorria, from gearr fiadh) means small game animal. And in centuries past large estates often kept warrens of hares for hunting. Indeed, they are still hunted (albeit only with a licence and only in season), and caught for use in coursing. Mountain hare
Ireland actually has its very own hare, as readers may discover from an informative new book, Exploring Irish Mammals, by the zoologists Tom Hayden and Rory Harrington. Known as the mountain (Irish) hare (Lepus timidus hibernicus), it is a close relative of the white Arctic hare. But although our Irish hare moults twice a year, its winter coat seldom, if ever, turns arctic white. This resolute brown-ness is one of its distinguishing features. Another is its (relatively) short ears. There were mountain hares in Ireland before the last ice age 30,000 years ago at least, and perhaps long before that too, making it one of our oldest surviving mammals, along with the red deer. In the 19th century the Irish hare was joined by a new arrival, the European brown hare (giorria gallda). This hare, which has a speckled coat and so is sometimes called the thrush hare, was introduced into northern counties where small numbers are still found. The brown hare is also the long-eared hare, with ears as long as its head. Bizarrely, it was just such a long-eared hare which featured on the old Irish silver three-penny piece. Probably the brown hare, then, and not really an Irish hare at all. Ah, such is the fickleness of money.
The Irish and the brown hare are just two of the 58 mammals discussed in Hayden's and Harrington's nicely illustrated book. Dip in and discover the diet and dislikes, droppings and distribution of everything from the tiny pygmy shrew (Irelands smallest mammal), to the enormous blue whale, the largest animal that ever existed.
Ice Age
Ireland has fewer mammals than Britain, mostly because not all those that made it to Britain after the Ice Age were able to cross to Ireland before sea levels rose again. Nevertheless, Tom and Rory make it seem like a rich collection. They present two insect-eaters: the hedgehog and pygmy shrew; nine bats; three lagomorphs (the rabbit, and the Irish and brown hare); seven rodents (from the bank vole to the rare and endangered black rat); half-a-dozen carnivores (including the fox, badger and American mink); four cloven-hoofed animals (three deer and the wild goat); and, in Irish waters, no fewer than 23 whale species and three types of seal.
Many of the animals featured are introductions, brought in by people either deliberately or accidentally. The gourmet Anglo-Normans, for instance, deliberately imported the fallow deer, rabbit and hedgehog to feature on their menus. (The trick when eating hedgehog, though Hayden and Harrington are too shy to mention it, was apparently to wrap it in mud and bake it. When the brick was ready, you broke it open, the spines came away with the clay, and you were left with one nicely-done and tender morsel. A delicacy no longer permitted, you will understand, under current wildlife legislation.) Among the accidental arrivals here are the bank vole (which may have escaped from a ship docking at Foynes port in the 1950s), and the black rat and brown rat. The black rat is a slender, almost elegant rodent that probably arrived in Ireland in early Christian times at least, the earliest Irish mention of it being a drawing in the Book of Kells. This is also the rat that carried the flea that carried the bug that caused the Black Death that arrived in Ireland in 1348.
Lambay Island
When the larger brown or common rat arrived here in the 1720s, it completely replaced its darker, slimmer cousin and now only one small black rat colony survives - on Lambay Island, off north Co Dublin. Thus the black rat is probably our rarest land mammal, and you will be lucky if you ever see one in the wild. Otherwise, the best place to go, should you wish to compare a black rat with its brown cousin, is Dublin's Natural History Museum - where, indeed, you can probably see examples of most of the 58 animals in this new book. All this, and much more, will you find in Exploring Irish Mammals, which runs to nearly 400 pages. Each entry is nicely illustrated by Billy Clarke, with both a black-and-white and a full-colour drawing. Published by Town House in association with Duchas, at £20.