The Naturalists' Notebook

Speke Hall is a National Trust property, south of Liverpool, adjacent to the airport.  It is a rare surviving Tudor timber-framed manor house, started in 1530 and restored in the 19th century. It was home to the devoutly Catholic Norris family, who were subject to fines and other legal penalties after Henry VIII broke with Rome. They kept a resident Catholic priest, and his secret hiding place known as a “priest hole“ still survives. The Hall’s upkeep was financed by the Norris family, and later by the Watt family, through their longstanding involvement in transatlantic slavery.

Another black mark against the Hall from our point of view is how difficult it is for pedestrians to get there. It’s a very long walk from the nearest bus stop, almost a mile down the long driveway. There is no proper footpath so we either had to walk on the grass verge or take our chances on the edge of the road.

Happily, John had some spare passes so we didn’t need to pay the entrance fee of £15.40. We were free to wander the grounds and the old orchard. There were plenty of windfall apples which had come down in Storm Amy and the old kitchen garden was still productive.

There were Magpies, Crows and Wood Pigeons around the trees and Jackdaws on the house roof, as well as a couple of Pied Wagtails. We spotted a Blackbird on a path and some Long-tailed Tits on the airport fence. A Heron flew over. Some flowers were still blooming in the verges and we noticed this bee foraging in a purple Michaelmas Daisy.

In the woods is the so-called Secret Garden, and there is supposed to be a rare Wollemi Pine there. So there was. It’s in quite a shady area so it isn’t flourishing as well as the ones at Princes Park and Ness Gardens.

On a bank around the back of the house there were some yellow flowers that looked like Crocuses. Too early for them, surely?  My friend Google reveals there is such a thing as a Yellow Autumn Crocus, Sternbergia lutea, also known as the winter daffodil, autumn daffodil or lily-of-the-field. Its leaves and yellow flowers appear in autumn. That’s what it must be.

Nearby were some flowers of the better-known Autumn Crocus, Crocus nudiflorus, with large, ghostly, purple flowers which emerge before the leaves.

Also around the back were some very pretty Acers showing off their autumn colours, and a Paperbark Maple, Acer trifolium, with peeling red bark and very untypical three-lobed leaves.

We are familiar with the bright red nail galls on some Lime tree leaves, caused by the gall mite Eriophyes tiliae. However, the ones we saw were white and slightly fluffy. Many images online show these white ones but no explanation is given.

There is a Woodland Trail for the kids, based on the legend of the giant called the “Childe of Hale”.  He lived in the nearby village of Hale around the year 1600 and was said to have been 9 foot 3 inches tall. This trail reproduces his cottage, where he is said to have slept with his feet out of the windows. As people pass, a sensor triggers a speaker, and the sleeping giant snores!

Public transport details: Bus 86A from Elliot Street at 10.02, arriving Speke Hall Avenue / Cartwright’s Farm Road at 10.50.  Returned on bus 86A from Speke Hall Avenue / Estuary Banks at 2.40, arriving Liverpool 3.30.

Although Taylor Park was once a gentleman’s estate, there are no fancy trees here. The main attraction is the lake. There are very many birds living here, including Mallards, Coots, Moorhens, Canada Geese, a few Herring Gulls, a pair of Mute Swans, and some distant Tufted Duck. Pigeons are all over the pathways. And, of course, large numbers of Black-headed Gulls.  We were pleased to find four of them with blue leg rings, which we noted and reported later.

278F was ringed as an adult at Taylor Park on 2nd December 2022. There have been 11 sightings of it since then, all at Taylor Park, but only in  late summer, autumn and winter. It must go elsewhere to breed in spring, but nobody has reported it yet.
221L and 222L were ringed as adults at Taylor Park on 30th November 2023. Sighted 5 times and 11 times respectively at Taylor Park, but only in autumn or winter. These two must also go elsewhere to breed, but nobody knows where.
The star bird was 210E, ringed as an adult at Taylor Park on 27th January 2022. It has been sighted 26 times since then, 19 times at Taylor Park in the off-season, but the other seven sightings were in Norway, reported in summer 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Every year it flies back to one of several places in the fjord south of Oslo, presumably to breed.

A path just before the quarry garden leads to the right, up shallow steps to the viewpoint. Half way up is an open area with several garden benches, just right for our lunch. When it was quiet the small grassy lawn was a haunt of Grey Squirrels, Magpies and Wood Pigeons. There was also a puddle on the path that the birds knew well, so we scattered some birdseed and sat quietly as a Song Thrush came to drink and bathe, and then another one. The second was a bit fluffy and might have been a grown-up chick.

The Birch trees all around had two Goldcrests, a Long-tailed Tit and a Blue Tit, and then a Robin and a Blackbird came at the same time for some seed and a drink.

Then we walked around the lake. At the far end a family of rats had made their home. An adult and at least two little ones were scampering about on some broken rock and concrete at the edge. They may be reviled rats, but it doesn’t stop the little ones being cute.

Near some houses at the north end Jackdaws were flying about. It turned out to be a bumper day for ringed birds. One Moorhen bore an orange ring on its left leg which we read as D34, but the code wasn’t recognised on the Waterbird Colour-marking Group’s website. Perhaps we read it wrong. But there was more success with a Coot marked BFF on a white ring. It had been first ringed at Taylor Park on 2nd December 2022. It had been sighted 11 times since then, but it didn’t lead a very exciting life. Six reports were from Taylor Park while the other five were from a place noted as “nr Ashton’s Green St Helens”, which seems to be a little wetland called The Duckeries on the other side of St Helens.

The usual notices were up on the lake railings about not feeding bread to the birds, and that birdseed is better. Some families had got the message, but others hadn’t. One young Mum with three or four kids in tow was encouraging a little girl to get to the bottom of a bag of sliced white, and she had three other complete loaves in waiting, all presumably to be thrown to the birds around the lake. Old habits die hard. At least one of the Canada Geese was showing signs of the deformity called “angel wing”, thought to be caused by too much bread.

On the way out we heard Nuthatch calls, probably two of them calling over each other, but we couldn’t see them overhead.

Public transport details: Bus 10A from Queen Square at 10.07, arriving Prescot Road / Toll Bar at 11.05. Returned on bus 10 from Prescot Road / Toll Bar at 2.28, arriving Liverpool at 3.20.   Next week we plan to go to Speke Hall. Meet at Elliot Street at 10 am.

It was a beautiful day, with a clear blue sky and bright sunshine, but there was an autumnal chill in the air, reminding us it was the day before the equinox. Summer is definitely over.

We had intended to go to Chester for several Heritage Open Day events, but Merseyrail had engineering works and rail replacement buses for part of the route, which made it impossible to get there in time. This is the second year running they have done this on the crucial day. So we chose a church that we hadn’t visited, located near the north end of Sefton Park and not open until after lunch. Time in the morning for a walk in the park. We entered at the “obelisk” path, hoping for some autumn colour. Most of the trees were still green, but there were some trees like the Cherry above and this Persian Ironwood, that were starting to turn.

The open fields were scattered with Crows, Wood Pigeons, Magpies and occasional Herring Gulls. Parakeets were squawking. Near the Palm House someone was feeding Pigeons and had attracted a small flock of Crows.

We headed for the Fairy Glen where a Kingfisher was said to be back for the winter. We didn’t see it, sadly. There were just Mallards and Moorhens on the little stream there. We heard several Nuthatches but didn’t see one.  On the bank of the stream near the stepping stones was an interesting tree. It had many bunches of red fruit, looking almost like red currants, hanging in unbranched bunches on long stalks. Definitely not a Cherry, as their fruits come in pairs, and the tree bark was wrong. Was it some kind of crab apple?  According to the experts on the Facebook tree group it might be a Siberian Crab Malus baccata or a Chinese or Hupeh crab Malus hupehensis, but there are several dozen other candidates. “A lot of precise work would be needed to be sure of what it is.”

We did a quick circuit of the lake before lunch. There were Coots, Moorhens, Canadas and two Mute Swans. No Little Grebes or Great Crested Grebes. No interesting storm-tossed migrants. But there were two Cormorants on the posts.

At the south end was a mixed flock of Gulls: Herring Gulls, Black-headed Gulls and one Lesser Black-backed Gull.

As usual, we lunched by the Aviary. The sunshine brought out one Speckled Wood butterfly and many insects foraging through the Himalayan Balsam. Is this a Honey Bee?

It’s a popular picnic spot, staked out by a Robin and a Blackbird, and possibly two House Sparrows which dived into the shrubbery as we approached. The availability of lunch crumbs there probably also accounts for two rats, which were very skittish, hiding away at the slightest noise or movement.

Then on to Christ Church, Linnet Lane. It’s a big Victorian church with beautiful stained glass, a splendid wooden ceiling and innovative roof design. However, the roof eventually leaked and it cost about a quarter of a million pounds to fix (via a Heritage Lottery Grant) a few years ago. Like many churches nowadays, the congregation has fallen to under 50, and the big church is too expensive to heat, so they have made a sort of insulated square yurt at the back of the church, and hold services there.

Public transport details: Bus 76 from Queen Square at 10.02, arriving Sefton Park Road / Croxteth Road at 10.20.  Returned on bus 82 from Park Road / Gredington Street at 2.05, arriving Liverpool 2.30.   Next week will be Taylor Park, St Helens. Meet 10 am Queen Square.

Light rain had been forecast but it turned out to be a much wetter day than we expected. We walked up Long Lane from the station, crossed the A59, and walked up through the ploughed fields to the reservoir. Black-headed Gulls, Crows, Jackdaws and Wood Pigeons were foraging in the freshly-turned earth.

We walked around to the right, skirting the outer edge of the reserve on a woodland path. It started to rain steadily. All the autumn berries are forming well, such as Rowan, Hawthorn, Sloes (Blackthorn) and Rose Hips.

The Blackberries formed early this year but the very dry summer has left them small, withered and dried up, although there is a second flush of flowers.

Although we knew the visitor’s centre didn’t open until 1pm we had expected Cabin Wood to be open earlier. Nope, that was still gated off, too, so we had to find some drippy shelter for lunch under the trees in some of the outer woods. As we made for the reserve at 1pm we came across one path that was full of small birds. Blackbirds, Robin, Dunnock, Greenfinch on the ground, Various small birds flitting back and forth across the path. We couldn’t see what was different about that particular spot. As we passed the gate to the heritage orchard, a Red Admiral flew past us. Amazing to see one on the wing on a gloomy wet day.  The apple trees were laden with fruit.

One we got into the reserve, we walked around Cabin Wood. To amuse children they have recently added lots of little “twigs with eyes” to the edges of the paths, that they call “Woodlins”, together with a story that they are refugees from other woodlands that have been cut down.

Before we left we went to look at the shrubby cluster of Wayfaring Trees Viburnum lantana on the western edge of Cabin Wood. Although it is a British native tree, it might be the only one in Lancashire. Its natural habitat is on the dryer chalklands of Southern Britain. It was planted here because it supports the caterpillars of the moth called the Orange-tailed Clearwing, Synanthedon andrenaeformis. No idea if it has worked yet in attracting the moth. We spotted only one cluster of berries, which were still not ripe. (Picture’s a bit fuzzy in the rain, I’m afraid.)

As we walked off towards the station, the rain stopped! It’s always the way, isn’t it.

Public transport details: Ormskirk train from Central at 9.55, arriving Aughton Park station at 10.25. Returned from Aughton Park station at 2.40, arriving Sandhills 3.05. No Sunday walk next week, we will be on the MNA Saturday walk to Pex Hill instead.

On the last day of meteorological summer we headed for two local private gardens, open for the day under the National Garden Scheme. The scheme is run by the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society), and many of Britain’s ordinary suburban gardeners are members. They charge a small fee (£4 today for both gardens), and the money raised (£3.5 million in 2024), supports health charities, community gardens and botanic gardens.

Our first call was 146 Mather Avenue, a small tree-ringed town garden run by a single lady. She has a wildlife pond, and colourful borders grown in home-made compost. She keeps a nettle patch for butterflies, then makes fertilizer when she cuts it down. There are many bird feeders and several visiting hedgehogs, which she feeds and tracks with little trail cameras. I liked it because it was very real, not fanatically neat, as some open gardens are.

The second garden, 33 Greenhill Road, was quite a contrast. It is owned by an enthusiast for tropical exotic plants. It is another small urban garden, this time walled all around, with no lawn, no ground soil, just paths lined with pots of exotics at different levels. He grows cacti, lemons, a pollarded Foxglove tree, and many weird and wonderful brightly-coloured plants. This yellow spike is a ginger, Heydichium sp.

These hanging red-and-yellow flowers are Datura, also known as Devil’s Trumpets or Jimson Weed. It is very poisonous in all parts.

We went into Calderstones Park for lunch. In the Ornamental Garden we looked at the Katsura tree, whose leaves are supposed to smell of burnt sugar or candy floss in the autumn. This one didn’t, although we have smelled one in Arrowe Park. Just through the gate in the wall is this lovely young ornamental tree, very weeping, very golden. It has been planted as a memorial to someone. There was no nursery label and we didn’t recognise it, but someone from the Fb tree group has suggested it might be a Weeping White Mulberry. That looks right to me – we saw a couple of them at Otterspool on 23 April 2023, part of an experimental “global warming” planting scheme.

On the edge of that field a young tree had fallen. It was one I was keeping an eye on because I thought it might be a Butternut. Each compound leaf is about 18 inches long with eight pairs of leaflets, plus one at tip. But there is hope. More than half of the roots are still firmly in the ground and the crown hasn’t wilted. It may survive as a series of shoots from the fallen trunk.

The Golden Rain tree by the pony field seems to have loved this hot summer, bearing very many seed pod “lanterns” all over it, especially higher up.

Around 2pm it started to rain, right as the weather forecast said, so it was time to go.

Public transport details: Bus 86A from Elliot Street at 10.02. arriving Mather Avenue / Booker Avenue at 10.35.  Returned from Mather Avenue / Storrsdale Road on bus 86A at 2.30, arriving Liverpool 3.05.
Next week we plan to go to Gorse Hill. The train is at 9.55, so we meet at Central about 9.45.

Festival gardens are not as smart as they used to be, but we came across some of the Friends of the park, valiantly clearing and planting in the heat. The big lake was almost dry and the smaller shaded lake was also down to a large puddle. The birds all seem to have deserted it, and we saw just two Moorhens in a shady overhang. Later on some scruffy-looking Mallards flew past. There were some unidentified dragonflies and damselflies around the remaining water, and a white butterfly (Large white?) foraged on a Buddleia.

There wasn’t a lot of wildlife interest, just the autumn seeds and berries coming along. We noted big bunches of seeds on Sycamore and Ash and lots of Alder cones forming. There were occasional apple trees with lots of small apples about the size of a tangerine, too big to be crab apples. The weather must have suited all of them in early spring when they were flowering.

Hawthorn is doing well, too.

The softer berries seemed to be sparser, probably due to the summer drought. Guelder Rose and Dogwood both had rather small and scrappy bunches of berries.

After lunch we walked northwards along Otterspool promenade, part of the way towards Liverpool. There were no birds worth noting on the river, just a few gulls bobbing about. We hoped to see Turnstones along the edge, but no luck, although they do like it along here at low tide. It was too hot to go any further than the Britannia Inn.

Public transport details: Train from Central at 10.13, arriving St Michael’s 10.20. Returned from Riverside Drive / Britannia Inn on the 500 bus at 1.22, arriving Elliot Street at 1.40.
Next week we plan to go to some open gardens from the National Garden Scheme. Meet Elliot Street 10.am.

Another warm and sunny day with a clear blue sky. New Brighton was having its first Scarecrow Festival, arranged by the residents of the Magazine Lane Conservation area. It’s a little lost village amongst the urban sprawl. (Magazine, by the way, does not refer in this case to brightly-coloured reading matter, but to its earlier meaning of a place to store explosives and ammunition. The original building here kept the shot and gunpowder for the Napoleonic Fort Perch Rock.) One of the gatehouses remains opposite Fort Road.

We spent the morning looking at the Scarecrows in people’s front gardens. They were numbered in situ, but the separate name list was a puzzle intended for the kids, to decide which was which.  

We sat in Vale Park for lunch and on the way out we inspected their Mulberry tree.  It’s fruiting well, with squished ones on the ground beneath, but no ripe black ones to pick. Either the local foragers are arriving early in the morning or the birds are eating them before they are fully ripe.

It became very hot in the afternoon. The tide was out, leaving a much larger expanse of beach than we usually see. There were the usual three types of Gull in amongst the pools, HG, LBB and BHG, several Oystercatchers, and also a dainty Little Egret.

From a distance we could see lots of birds on the pontoons, more than we expected at low tide. Birds usually gather there when the feeding grounds are covered at HIGH tide.

As we got nearer we could see they were about 200 Turnstones, still in summer plumage, and many were preening energetically. Had they just arrived from their breeding season in eastern Canada and Greenland?

Public transport details: Bus 432 from Sir Thomas Street at 10.02, arriving Magazine Lane / Stanford Avenue at 10.29.  Returned on bus 432 from King’s Parade / Morrison’s at 2.30, arriving Liverpool 3.05.
Next week we plan to go to Festival Gardens. Meet 10 am at Central Station.

It was a morning of fine rain, lending everywhere a misty look. Greenbank Park was quiet and we spotted a Jackdaw on the grass and a Robin on a fence. There were only a few common waterbirds on the lake: Coots, Mallards, Canada Geese, Black-headed Gulls and Herring Gulls.

The walled garden was particularly pretty in the damp haze. The flowers on the Wisteria arch had gone over, but there are still some seed pods hanging under the pergola if anyone wants to try growing from seed. The small trees on the lawns are all rather lovely. There’s a young Gingko and something with variegated leaves, and flower buds that look like Privet. Possibly a Ligustrum ovalifolium ‘Argentum’, said to be late-flowering and bigger than a hedge plant.

They have a Tamarisk tree. There are two species, early-flowering and summer-flowering, and this must be the latter, Tamarix pentandra.

We found a tree known as a Box Elder, but it’s really one of the Maple family, Acer trifolium. The leaves don’t look maple-like, but have three leaflets (as in the Latin name), and the seeds are obviously Acer-type wings. This will be a female tree of course, and there must be a male tree nearby, but they are hard to find.

One new planting was labelled Sorbus x thuringiaca ‘Fastigiatum’  I thought the name rang a bell, but it wasn’t until I looked it up at home that I found it was a Bastard Service tree, a hybrid between Whitebeam and Rowan, and a lifer for me. It has interesting leaves, partly broken up into leaflets as if it can’t decide how they should be. Sadly I didn’t take a picture of them because I didn’t realise they were so interesting.

Then we headed down Greenbank Lane for a brief visit to Sefton Park for lunch and loo. The rain had almost stopped, and we noted Carrion Crows, Wood Pigeons and the noisy Ring-necked Parakeets flying overhead. Then up Greenbank Drive to Sefton Park Allotments Open Day. The produce table was well-patronised. Not much on it at any one time, but the plot holders kept on bringing more bags of stuff.

We met two other MNA members there. Chen B, who is a plot holder and was volunteering on the produce table, and Mike T, just visiting, who had found a clump of little fungi. Possibly in the Boletus genus. Were they Penny Bun Boletus edulis? But I think these were too small for that.

There was a Scarecrow competition

There were a few butterflies on the wing when the weak sun came out, mostly Whites, but this Meadow Brown was resting on some netting.

The man on the allotment dedicated to the SSFA (service veterans organisation) got talking about wildlife and said that on good sunny days there are clouds of butterflies over the vegetable plots. He also told us of a huge caterpillar he had found that morning. Jet black, maybe short hair, no spikes or horns. He had it across his palm and it overlapped on both sides (So 4 inches? 10 cm?). John got out his FSC caterpillar ID card, and the man said the one he found was bigger than all of the ones pictured. He had no specimen to show. He had been slightly horrified by it, and threw it into the woody hedge surrounding the allotments. From his description it might have been either a Goat Moth or an Elephant Hawk Moth, although neither is jet black all over.  Any suggestions?
       
He also had my favourite scarecrow, “Just checkin’ my spuds”.

And here are some of the interesting things that were growing. Grapes, Globe artichokes, Tomatoes, large round Courgettes.

Public transport details: Bus 86 from Elliot Street at 10.02, arriving Smithdown Road / Borrowdale Road (the Brookhouse) at 10.20. Returned on bus 86A from Smithdown Road / Nicander Road at 1.35, arriving city centre at 1.55.
No Sunday walk next week. On 17th August meet Queen Square at 10 am and we will decide on the day.

We walked into Southport from Birkdale Station, along Weld Road, then turning right into the south end of Rotten Row. It’s one of the country’s longest herbaceous borders (750m), now maintained by a Friends group of volunteer gardeners.

I always hope to see all those flowers humming with insects, but it was surprisingly silent. The sun wasn’t shining, which would have brought more flying beasties out, but all we saw were two or three honeybees, a few worker bumblebees, no hoverflies or anything smaller, and just three kinds of butterflies, one large White, one Red Admiral and three Gatekeepers.

There weren’t many birds about, either. We spotted Wood Pigeons on house roofs, a Swallow over the park, a Blackbird under shrubs and Jackdaws and Magpies on the grass. We stopped at Morrison’s supermarket, then lunched in King’s gardens. Several Herring gulls and Black-headed gulls came to fight over scraps of bread and we noticed two of the BHGs bore blue Darvic rings on their legs. I reported them later in the day. BHG number 230L was ringed as adult at Southport on 1st December 2023. Four subsequent sightings were listed, three at Southport and one at Ainsdale. It seemed to be absent from the area from March to September last year and had not been reported anywhere this year until today.

BHG number 2V93 was ringed as adult at Southport on 8th December 2020. Since then it has been reported 11 times, 10 times at Southport and once at Ainsdale. Most of the older sightings were just in January and February each year, so it may have wandered in other seasons, but last year it was seen five times at Southport.

On the Marine Lake were the usual flocks of Herring Gulls, Black-headed Gulls and Lesser Black-backed Gulls. Plenty of Mute Swans were loafing about, and also Canada and Greylag Geese. One young Moorhen swam near the bridge piers, while far out on the northern arm of the lake was a dark diving duck, hard to identify. On the balance of possibilities, it was probably a Tuftie. There was nothing else exciting going on. They rent out pedal boats here, shaped like Swans or Flamingos, with just one of them painted up as a Black Swan. We were amused to see that they all had punky anti-gull spikes on their heads to keep them clean.

Public transport details: Train from Central Station at 10.02, arriving Birkdale 10.45. Returned from Southport Station at 1.36.
Next week we are going to Greenbank and the Sefton Park Allotments Open Day. Meet at Elliot Street at 10 am.

Thundery showers were forecast, so we picked New Brighton as a place with lots of shelter from the rain. As our bus emerged from the tunnel on the Wallasey side, our trepidation was increased by the sight of a snow plough stored by the side of the road!  In the event we only got occasional sprinkles, barely enough to wet the roads.

The tide seemed very low, still going out, with low tide due at about 2pm. The breakwater between Fort Perch Rock and the lighthouse was fully exposed and the Stena Line ferry to Belfast sailed out. There were hardly any birds on the beach, just a lone Lesser Black-backed Gull, with a few sundry gulls flying overhead. No waders on the pontoons. A couple of Pied Wagtails foraged around the seaweed and, unusually, there were Feral Pigeons on the sand. The best birds were on a navigation marker – two Cormorants and a couple of Carrion Crows.

A shower sent us into the Floral Pavilion where there was a small exhibition of paintings by local artists. The best was “Through Seagrass” by Marcus G J Cotton. Spot the Black Restart!

Soon after lunch we headed home. At Queen Square bus station there was a very bold urban Lesser Black-backed gull surveying the traffic from the roof of a bus shelter.

Public transport details: Bus 432 from Sir Thomas Street at 10.05, arriving King’s Parade / Rowson Street at 10.30. Returned on bus 432 from King’s Parade / Morrison’s at 1 pm, arriving Liverpool at 1.30. 
Next week we plan to go to Southport, meeting at Central Station at 10 am.