Category Archives: Sunday Group

We seem to go to a lot of parks during the summer, because there isn’t much going on in the woods or on the coasts. Taylor Park in St Helens greeted us with a fine display of pink flowers by…

The Park lake had great numbers of birds, but no unexpected species – just Mallard, with the moulting males and females now almost indistinguishable; Canada Geese and a few Greylag Geese; many Black-headed Gulls, now starting to moult out their…

There are more parks or wildlife areas in Ormskirk than we thought! If you turn left from the station doorway towards the car park, there’s an area called Station Approach, a 7 acre mixed woodland and wildflower meadow on the…

We entered the park from Ballantrae Road, at the south-west entrance. Just inside were two multi-trunked trees that appeared to be dead. A few leaves remained on one, which showed they were some kind of Maple. One had a clump…

The trains to Wirral came back on this week, after several months of disruption while the track under the river was being replaced. We celebrated by going to West Kirby. Mercifully, it was a much cooler day, with light drizzle…

On the hottest day of the year we took refuge in the cool, shady tranquilly of Alexandra Park in Crosby. (The picture above is a 2009 autumn picture “borrowed” from Flickr.)  The park was opened in December 1902, just scraping…

Stanley Park wasn’t quite at its best, with the massed Daffodils of the Field of Hope all gone, and  the formal beds yet to come into their peak flowering.  It was quite a grey day too, overcast and warm, but…

We went to Kirkby to follow up reports of nesting Peregrines on the church, but we had a good look at the trees in St Chad’s Gardens first. They have a fine young Deodar, a Laburnum arch that has just…

From Freshfield Station we walked down Victoria Road, entertained by a succession of Blackbirds who sang to us all the way along. In estate-agent-speak it is “one of the best roads in the north west”, meaning it is lined by…

Long Lane in Aughton has interesting and colourful gardens, with Rowan, Cherry, Lilac and Laburnum all in bloom and red Maples coming into leaf. Even the Sycamores are interesting, with many of them being the variety ‘Brilliantissimum’. The leaves open…