The Naturalists' Notebook

Still cold, but it was sunny most of the day. We spent the day ambling around both the upper and lower parks, still looking very fine after their restoration in June 2007.

The usual park birds were on the lake, noisy Canada Geese, Mallard, Coot, Moorhen and Mute Swans. We noted two odd-looking black Mallard drakes, who are probably survivors of the group we saw during our last visit on 13th November  2011, when there were five young black ducks and one white one, all swimming together like a brood of brothers and sisters. These two blacks drakes seem to be the same ones, coming up to two years old.

We stopped to look at a Yew tree covered in small “blobs”. Yew are “dioecious” meaning that they have separate male and female trees. These are the male “flowers”, the parts that produce the pollen.

Another tree nearby bore the female flowers, also small, but fewer of them.

Woodland birds included Magpie, Wood Pigeon, Blackbird, Long-tailed tits and a friendly Robin.

Between the upper and lower parks is a splendid Victorian postbox, one of the Penfold type dating from about 1870.

There was a bitingly cold north wind today, as we took the 19A bus from Queen Square to Walton Lane/Bodmin Road and crossed into Anfield Cemetery. There weren’t many birds, just Carrion Crows, Magpies and a flock of Black-headed Gulls, but there was a Grey Squirrel who sat low in a tree and nibbled on a peanut.

We are always interested in War Graves, and there are several notable ones in Anfield Cemetery. There is a mass grave of 554 Liverpool citizens who were killed in the May Blitz in 1941. Three Belgian Merchant Seamen were also killed that week and their gravestones are near the side of a path, probably cared for by the Belgian Government.

The most interesting memorials record the burial somewhere in the cemetery of two early recipients of the Victoria Cross. The one on the left is for Patrick Mylott who was honoured for his bravery in Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion (Mutiny) of 1857 while the other is for Joseph Prosser for his valour at Sevastopol in 1855 during the Crimean War.

Then on into Stanley Park. On the lake were the usual Mallards, Canada Geese and Moorhens, and one star bird, a male Mandarin Duck, mixed in with the Mallards crowding for bread.

There was also a flock of Black-headed gulls. I counted 50, and 5 had their black heads, 10%. This is up from 2% last week at Greenbank Park. Several Magpies were bathing in the shallows, there were Blackbirds and a Dunnock on the bank and four Pochards – three males and a female – at the south end.

The sun came out while we ate our lunches in a sheltered spot near the pavilion, but it was soon cold again with a hint of sleet in the air. We walked back along the lake, trying to spot the Mandarin again, and also looking for the female which was said to have been with him a week or so ago. We eventually found the male roosting next to a Mallard on the edge of the island. A young family came by to feed the ducks and I pointed out the unusual one and said I hoped the bread they were throwing would make it stir itself and come to be photographed. With that, the young father took out a whole piece of thick-sliced white bread and flung it like a frisbee at the Mandarin. Luckily it landed in the water, not on the poor bird’s head. A flock of BHGs immediately dived on the bounty, screaming and splashing. The fuss roused the Mandarin as planned, but it just sat on the edge of the island, preening. We never did see the female, and wonder if she is hidden away somewhere, nesting, or if she didn’t stick around.

It was a bright and sunny day, but deceptively cold. We took the 86 bus to the Brookhouse pub and walked down Gorsebank Road to Greenbank Park.

The lake was full of the usual birds of urban parks. Mallards of course, a Coot on a nest, a Moorhen, plenty of Canada Geese paired up and trumpeting at each other and at least a hundred Black-headed Gulls, with about one in fifty showing their black heads fully grown out. These are the older ones, apparently. There was a Herring Gull, a pair of Lesser Black-backed Gulls, one Mute Swan, a Cormorant (which was a surprise) and a Grey Squirrel (which wasn’t). In the ornamental garden the first daffodils were out and the trees held a Blue Tit, a Carrion Crow and some Magpies.

Then we walked to Sefton Park down Greenbank Road North and Ibbotson’s Lane. A coach stopped at the corner of Penny Lane. Tourists? Yes, they all got out and photographed each other, two by two, next to the Penny Lane street sign.

We were very cold by then so we had lunch out of the wind in the Palm House. Lots of lovely tropical flowers were out. There were splendid blue orchids, something with a flower looking like a scarlet firework an inch and a half across, and one whose name sign we found, the Shrimp Plant Beloperone guttata.

Around the park there were various signs of spring. The yellow Crocuses were out, the Witch Hazel had just finished flowering and the Alder trees were covered in catkins.

Another Coot was nesting on the lake. Two Mute Swans were sleeping on the island – were these the nesting pair? There has been an amazing increase in the Little Grebe population off the end of the island. At the end of August we though there were five, possibly a pair with three juveniles, but today we thought we saw ten or eleven. We stopped to talk to a photographer, and he said he thought he’d counted sixteen.

It was a very bleak and wet day so we decided to go to the Museum of Liverpool. We did get some bird watching and fresh air, though. As well as taking a trip on the Mersey Ferry for lunch, we spotted five Cormorants in Canning Half-Tide Dock. Two of them had quite a lot of white on their heads and necks, perhaps more than the normal adult courship plumage, and we wondered if they were from the continental sub-species marrocanus.  One of the Superlambananas outside the Museum was painted with marine life – is this supposed to be a Common Gull? It has yellow legs, a dark eye and no red spot on its bill.

Highlights of the Museum were replicas of the carvings from the Calder Stones, casts of early human footprints from Formby shore, dated to 4000 to 6000 years ago,

… an imagined diorama of the earliest scousers, camping in a woodland clearing in the Woolton area

… a complete coal fired chip fryer from a chippy in Rice Lane, with hand-painted tiles and copper edging, used from 1925 to 1982, and the model of the Lutyens RC cathedral which was never built.