The Naturalists' Notebook

By entering Reynolds Park at the “wrong” (east) end, we came straight into their wild flower meadow. Much of the early blossom had gone over, but there was still a tangle of Teasel, Corn Marigold, Oxeye Daisy, Purple Loosestrife, Common Toadflax, Greater Willowherb, Creeping Thistle, Green Alkanet, Greater Plantain, Red Campion and Bird’s Foot Trefoil.  Amongst the trees, we spotted two young Dawn Redwoods, and the first fruits of the Yew were ripening.

There is a collection of tall columnar trees on the lawn north of Calvert Court, and I hoped one was going to be an Incense Cedar, one of the trees still outstanding on our I-Spy list. Incense Cedars aren’t cedars at all, they are in the Cypress group. The tree we looked at was the right tall thin shape, and was definitely a cypress from its cones, but the crushed foliage is supposed to smell strongly of boot polish, and this didn’t. No tick for Incense Cedar today!

The last time we were in Reynolds Park was August 2014. We followed their tree trail leaflet then, and found an error – the tree they had labelled as a Tree of Heaven (number 10) is now correctly marked as a Black Walnut. It’s on the left in the photo below, and the long leaves are very elegant, with the leaflets at the tips catching the light like a spear points.

There is an old sundial there, and written around it is the Latin tag from Virgil – Solem quis dicere falsum audeat. “Who will dare to say that the sun is wrong”. In British Summer Time in the UK the sun IS wrong, of course, or at least the clocks are. We admired the green and gold topiary “crown” garden, made with Yew and Golden Yew. It looks most effective on the aerial view.

The Deodar Cedars had some big cones, but the  cones on the Blue Atlas Cedar were still very young.

In the sunken garden Goldenrod was flowering in profusion. Regrettably, it was the Canadian Goldenrod, not the native plant we want for our list. There was a cluster of big fungi the size of saucers growing under a bush, looking and smelling very like edible mushrooms. We were tempted to snaffle one or two, but good sense prevailed. You never know …

A loud call made us look up to the top of a Cypress, and there was a Great Spotted Woodpecker silhouetted against the sky, probably a juvenile with that red cap.

The walled garden had a wonderful display of Roses and Dahlias, and there were white and blue butterflies on the wing. The young Indian Bean Tree in the eastern corner bed is growing well and the Judas Tree against the south-facing wall next to the central gateway was flourishing, with bigger leaves than I’ve seen on any other Judas Tree in Merseyside.  The Tulip Tree had flowered profusely, too, as there were very many young fruits.  In another corner bed was an unpretentious little tree or shrub, only about 4 or 5 feet tall, with droopy leaves with a yellow midrib, bearing gorgeous little red fruit looking like raspberries on cocktail sticks. Happily, there was a label by the base of the trunk. It’s a Chinese Dogwood, Cornus kousa ‘Chinensis’. The fruits are said by the RHS to be edible but insipid, but a US forager’s blog called Wild Harvests says “I found that they have a soft creamy texture and sweet flavor similar to papaya” and the author mashed them up to add to a smoothie.

South of the topiary crown is another lawn with specimen trees. There were a couple of dark rings of lush grass, probably made by some kind of Fairy Ring fungus, although there were no toadstools.  Trees included various Maples, a probable Oriental Plane and this little beauty with chocolate brown bark and small glossy crinkled leaves which I think is an Antarctic Beech Nothofagus antarctica.

Apart from the GSW, we saw hardly any birds today, just Magpies and Wood Pigeons in the park.  We had no new birds, trees or flowers for the I-Spy lists today, which is unusual. We are down to the hard-to-get ones now!  We ambled down Church Road towards Woolton Village. Since it was a Bank Holiday weekend there were groups of tourists about. The Eleanor Rigby gravestone in St Peter’s churchyard had two walking guides with their tour groups around the stone, and a Beatles Taxi Tour was just leaving.

In the park and on the bus journey home we noticed how badly the Horse Chestnut trees are being affected by the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner. I don’t think we saw any healthy green-leaved ones anywhere.  The last time we were in Reynolds Park three years ago, it was new to us then, but now it’s a common feature of autumn.

Public transport details: Bus 75 from Liverpool ONE bus station at 10.20, arriving Rose Brow / Gateacre Brow at 10.50. Returned on the 75 from Woolton Village at 1.45, arriving Liverpool 2.15.

Another tree trail this week, following the plan in the Friends of Birkenhead Park’s “Unusual Trees” booklet (£2 from the Visitors’ Centre.) Our first target was the Black Mulberry Morus nigra, which is on the north bank of the Lower Lake, west of the Boathouse and on a bank near two park seats. It’s quite big for a Mulberry, and it’s intertwined with blackberries, but the red unripe Mulberry fruit were easy to distinguish. Several had fallen to the path below, probably bird-pecked. There’s a beaten track up the slope next to the tree, very probably made by foragers.

At the westernmost end of the Lower Lake, near the rockery, is a Cucumber Tree Magnolia accuminata.  The tree itself isn’t anything to look at, being tall and spindly, but the leaves are huge and the fruits are bright pink erect “cucumbers”.

There were some butterflies on the wing including Speckled Wood and Common Blue. On the lake were only Mallards, Coots, Moorhens, Black-headed Gulls and large flocks of noisy Canada Geese. Several young Robins darted onto the paths, just getting their red breasts so had probably been driven off by their parents. One of us caught the flash of a Kingfisher flying low over the water. We wandered all around the eastern corner of the lake but didn’t see it again. Lots of hungry Pigeons and cheeky Grey Squirrels, though!

Some of the trees are getting their autumn colours. In this view over the lake the droopy yellowing one on the right is probably a Silver Pendent Lime, while the one on the far side, turning red, appears to be a Norway Maple.

Some of the grass verges have been planted with tangled patches of flowers. There was the wild flower Redshank in amongst them, which we want for the I-Spy list. They weren’t strictly all wild flowers, because there was Alyssum, California Poppy and garden Marigold in there too.

As the others headed for lunch Margaret and I lingered over a Lime tree, checking the features in both our tree books. We really want to learn these Limes!  We noted hairs on the fruits, which were round, in 4s or 5s, and all hanging down; hairs on the undersides of the leaves and the leaf stems;  buff hairy tufts at the base of the leaf and in some vein axils; big cabbagey leaves on some low shoots. Can we claim it as a Large-leaved Lime Tilia platyphyllos? I have checked again, and apart from the suggestion in the books that the fruits ought to be ribbed, which I’ve never found, I think we have cracked it, and we earn 15 points.

There were wonderful gold and red bedding plants in front of the Visitors Centre. After lunch we  headed for the Upper Park. Opposite the Victorian letter box where Park Drive crosses Ashville Road, there is a cluster of interesting young trees planted on a stone-setted pavement. We noted a Tulip Tree, what might have been a Small-leaved Lime, a Turkish Hazel and something like an Apple or Medlar but no fruit to confirm it.

Floridly-bracted fruits of the Turkish Hazel.

On the north bank of the Upper Lake we admired a very young Monkey Puzzle, nearly dwarfed by its stake. Next to it was a handsome young Bhutan Pine, an uncommon five-needle pine.

The Horse Chestnuts along that path are very badly affected by the leaf miner, with all the lower leaves browning and droopy. There’s a Strawberry Tree along there, too, but bearing no fruit. A big old Grey Poplar had mixed bark – the lower portions were craggy like a Black Poplar while the bark higher up was showing rows of dark diamond shapes on a light background, like White Poplar.

We had been looking out for the two surviving tall thin black Mallards which usually swim under the  bridge at north-east end of the Lower Lake. There had been a brood of five when we first spotted them in November 2011, but only two survived to March 2013. We spotted the survivors again in early 2014 and late 2015, and one last November. We were pleased to find what might be the same one loitering on the bank of the Upper Lake, and it must now be at the end of its sixth summer.

There are some lovely specimen trees on the meadow in the Upper Park and we walked out to admire the grove of Purple Cherry Plums (Prunus pissardi or Prunus cerasifera ‘Pissardii’).

On the left of Ashville Road, approaching Park Road North, was a very pretty young Japanese Maple in its autumn colours, which we also want for our list.

Our last tree was the Hybrid Strawberry by the traffic lights, with its interesting red peeling bark. We had two new trees today, so we are up to 1170. One new plant, taking us to 1085, but we have been stuck at 1285 on the birds since early June.

Public transport details: Train towards West Kirby from Central at 10.05, arriving Birkenhead Park Station at 10.15. Returned from the same station at 14.22, arriving Liverpool 14.35.

On the way from the bus, at the corner of Woodhead Road and Bolton Road East we stopped to look at a Snow Gum (a Eucalyptus tree) and a Contorted Willow, both  interesting choices for a suburban garden. One of the very new houses on Dock Road North had an empty House Martin’s nest tucked into the apex of the pediment, showing that they don’t need old houses to breed on. In the park the path edges were a profusion of flowers, with Fleabane, a long-flowered Mint (Apple Mint?), Tansy, Common Knapweed, Michaelmas Daisy, Ribbed Melilot, Wild Carrot, Teasel, the second flush of Bramble flowers,  Yarrow, Common Toadflax, Black Medick, Mugwort and Fennel.

Fleabane

Common Knapweed

Ribbed Melilot

Black Medick

Mugwort

One tree, which was definitely an Alder, had unusual rich brown bark with pale markings. It wasn’t a rare variant (our first thought) because now I see that Mitchell says young trees have purplish-brown bark, and the Collins tree guide mentions “pale horizontal lenticels”.

Autumn is coming on apace, with ripening Blackberries, red Rowan and Hawthorn berries, heads of Elderberries and the seeds of Creeping Thistle (Thistledown?)

The River Park was celebrating its third anniversary with a Birthday Party picnic. To encourage children to walk around and notice things, the Friends had put up a series of numbered signs, with easy questions (ludicrously so for adults) placed right in front of the plants with the answers.

John had spotted both Swallows and Swifts overhead. A young Warbler was hunkered down in an Elder, showing its white eye stripe but otherwise unidentifiable. There was a Cormorant perching on something in the river, and on the pond were Canada Geese, Mallards, a Mute Swan, a Little Grebe, Redshank, Teal and a few Black-tailed Godwits who appeared to be just flying in from their breeding season further north.

Butterflies were about in the sunshine, including Gatekeeper, Large White, Meadow Brown, Green-veined White and this rather worn female Common Blue.

Cheshire, Halton, Warrington and Wirral RECORD had a stall around the back. We checked some of the finer points of plant ID with them (Hop Trefoil or Black Medick? Which Melilot?) and we were able to add several things to their daily list.

It was sunny and dry, a great day for their picnic. Stalls included the RSPB, Merseyside and West Lancs Bat Group, Cheshire Wildlife Trust, Chester Zoo, the Soroptomists, face painting, kids painting model animals, and a cake stall. The local bee keepers had a demonstration comb in a glass case, with the Queen Bee marked with a yellow dot.

Rockliffe Raptors were there, with a Red Tailed Hawk, a Little Owl, and a Kestrel called “Hettie”.

On the way back we spotted a huge stalk of Great Mullein growing out of the base of a new wall.  Several groups of Gulls were circling high up, possibly after flying ants. No new trees or birds today, but we added three new flowers, so our points are up to 1070.

Public transport details: Bus X8 from Sir Thomas Street at 10.20. It zooms along the New Ferry bypass, arriving at the first stop at New Chester Road / Pool Lane at 10.40. Returned on bus number 1 from New Chester Road opp Shore Drive at 2.40, arriving city centre at 3.05.

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 gates. Japanese Anemones?

There were Wood Pigeons in the trees and several spotty young Robins on the path. The lake itself had the usual Coots, Canada Geese, Mallards, Black-headed Gulls and one Muscovy Duck. On their notice board the park claims to get Kingfisher, Pochard and Goldeneye, but none of them were there today. But they had a pair of Mute Swans, one distant Tuftie, some House Martins swooping acrobatically over the water, and one Greylag Goose which looked like it had some White-fronted Goose in its ancestry.

We lunched in the sunken garden, which is an old quarry, and they have a collection of stumps of petrified trees known as Bog Oak.  We took a muddy side path and found a smaller lake used by fishermen, which I think was Eccleston Top Dam. It must be deeper than the main lake, because there was a Great Crested Grebe on it. The water lilies with their small yellow flowers and almost-submerged bottle-shaped seeds were Yellow Water Lilies, for which we get I-Spy points.

On a reed leaf was a Blue-tailed Damsel Fly.

Another good insect was this one on Hogweed, which I think is a Hornet Mimic Hoverfly Volucella zonaria, Britain’s largest Hoverfly, which is extending its range northwards as the climate warms.

There were interesting wild flowers near that fishing lake and in the damp woods around it. Himalayan Balsam , of course, Self-heal and Water Mint. I wanted one of the small Dandelion-ish flowers to be Smooth Hawk’s Beard, which is in the I-Spy book, but now I have looked at all the dozen or so Hawk’s Beards, Hawkbits and Hawkweeds I realise that they are very hard to identify and I’m not so sure. There was also this plant gowing in the shade. Not Enchanter’s Nightshade, which I know, and too late for  Dog’s Mercury, so was it Wood Sage? But the leaves weren’t crinkly like the other sages. No idea what it was, but there was quite a lot of it.

There were White Water Lilies on the main lake, with just the flowers poking out of the water and no apparent leaves. There were two broods of young Mallards, still being shepherded by their mothers.  One pair were a bit fluffy, but other brood of four teenagers looked fully grown. A well-grown young Coot was begging food from its mother, but she looked fed up and kept fending it off. The Purple Loosestrife was in fine bloom.

The Oak trees in the park seemed to have been badly infected with Knopper Galls, and we saw no developing acorns at all.

Today’s bus journeys were long ones, so we did some spotting from the top deck. One major road junction had a flock of several dozen Starlings on a roundabout, and we saw two Swifts on the way home.  Praise is due to Knowsley or Rainhill Council for a lovely display of wild flowers in sinuous beds along Warrington Road near Rainhill station. They have planted the standard mix of Poppy, Cornflower, Ox-Eye Daisy and Corn Marigold, but the effect is very pretty.

No additional trees or birds today, but we got five new flowers worth 110 points and so we are now officially I-Spy Super Spotters with 1005 points. Today’s surprising score was greatly helped by the 50 points for the Corn Marigold, which is rare in the wild but common in the roadside wild flower mix. That feels a bit like cheating, but we will take it!

Public transport details: Bus 10A from Queen Square at 10.15, arriving Prescot Road / Toll Bar at 11.15.  Back from the stop opposite on bus 10A at 2.22, arriving Liverpool 3.20.

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 black heads; a handful of Mute Swans, none apparently with rings, and no cygnets from this year; just a few Coots and one or two Moorhens. This young Moorhen was sitting calmly on the walkway next to the reeds.

In the Woodland Walk we noticed that the bat hibernaculum was still standing and that there were bat boxes on the trees. We spotted just one more wild flower for our list, Lords and Ladies, although it was berries, of course, rather than the flower.

We ate our sandwiches in Appleton gardens, with beds of cultivated flowers like the tall Acanthus mollis, known as Bear’s Britches, and a scattering of Primulas, which were way out of their normal flowering time. A wild patch had some splendid poppies and a poor, raggedy bird-pecked Speckled Wood.

There were some Lime trees with no twiggy sprouts at their bases so were they Small-leaved? They had the tufts of brown hairs at the bases of the leaves, which is said to be diagnostic, but the little seeds, supposed to be hairless in Small-leaved Limes, were definitely fuzzy. Drat!  The leaves were sprouting nail galls, which occur on all Limes, so that was no help either.

Then we went into the Butterfly House, where exotic species fly about freely. The rangers who supervise it aren’t always sure what species they have, as they buy a job lot and see what they get!  The ID pictures on the wall definitely didn’t cover everything that was there. But there were the usual Blue Morphos, which hardly ever sit still, and when they do they fold up their wings to show off their eye-spots.

This one is a Chequered Swallowtail Papilio demoleus, whose caterpillars look like bird droppings. It is widespread from the Middle East to the Far East and is considered invasive in Australia.

This one is The Blue Clipper Parthenos sylvia subsp. lilacinus, which comes from Malaysia.

There were some caterpillars which looked like they were going to be hawkmoths, and these very odd-looking ones which looked like tiny bananas.

They have to keep the Butterfly House very hot, so by the time the perspiration started running out of my hair and dripping off my nose, I had to make a break for the outside. Gosh it was hot in there! On a bank of pink cultivated Meadow Cranesbill we watched a White butterfly flit from flower to flower, and after some debate we decided that it was probably a Large White.

Near the station we were amazed to see a very late-blooming Magnolia in a garden, and on the road we found another cluster of mating bumble bees. There appeared to be three of them this time – a female Red-tailed, a male of the same species in the wrong position, and an interloping male of another species which looks to be getting the best of the deal (but not from an evolutionary perspective, of course).

No new trees or birds today, but the Lords and Ladies got us 15 points and we correctly answered the question on last week’s Foxglove (What part of the body does the medicine derived from Foxglove treat? The heart.) So we are up to 895.

Public transport details: Train from Lime Street at 10.26, arriving Widnes 10.58. (This is one stop outside the Merseytravel area, so we had to buy return tickets from Hough Green to Widnes.) Returned from Widnes at 14.17 (delayed to 14.26).

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 site the old sidings and branch line to Skelmersdale. We did well for flowers there, noting Spear Thistle, Ragwort, Viper’s Bugloss, Foxglove, Great Willowherb and Lesser Burdock.

After the sun came out there were lots of butterflies foraging for nectar, too. Large White, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Green-veined White, Brimstone and this Comma on Creeping Thistle.

There were Cinnabar Moth caterpillars on some of the Ragwort flowers, but they haven’t yet risen to the huge numbers we saw a few years ago. There was also a mating pair of Common Red Soldier Beetles Rhagonycha fulva.  Wikipedia tells me they are so often seen coupling on white umbellifers that their common British epithet is “Hogweed Bonking Beetle”.

We spotted a Song Thrush on the path and a Rabbit just disappearing as it heard us coming. Last night it rained, which had tempted out a huge variety of slugs onto the path, but they were heading back to the shade of the grass as swiftly as they could. Talking of bonking, we stopped to look at what appeared to be a copulating pair of Buff-tailed Bumble Bees on a shady part of the path. The one at the front was still, but the one at the back, presumably the male, was pulsating.

On a sunny corner a Common Hawker dragonfly was hanging vertically at head-height in the hedge, in amongst the Goose Grass.

The path brought us back to the station, and then John led us to a tiny formal park in a triangle between St Helens Road and Ruff Lane, where we had our sandwiches. The flower beds were bright with cultivated blooms, but some of the gardeners had skimped their work, because the “weed” Gallant Soldier flourished amongst the showier Geranium blooms. The little park seems to have been formed around an interesting pre-WWI War Memorial, because plaques on the obelisk named a local man who had participated in the Charge of the Light Brigade (but survived): “Sgt Major Nunnerley of the 17th Lancers, one of the Six Hundred” and also three men who had been killed in the Boer War. There was a young Weeping Birch next to it, which was appropriate.

One large Marigold had a Gatekeeper butterfly, while a Buddleia had a single Red Admiral, the day’s seventh species.

Then to Ormskirk’s principal park, Coronation Park. The lake was full of Black-headed Gulls, moulting Mallards, a surprising number of Moorhens and a pair of Coots feeding two ugly, baldy little chicks.

Beyond the Lake they have a wildflower meadow. Most of it was Creeping Thistle and Great Willow Herb, but there was also Cornflower, Meadow Sweet starting to bloom and a Wild Teasel showing how it flowers, in a wave of development climbing up the head.

Meadow Sweet

Wild Teasel

Across County Road is the showroom of a company called Pangea Sculptures. If you have ever wanted a life-sized metal elephant or hippopotamus on your estate (!), this is the place to come. They cost a few thousand pounds, of course, but now we know where the huge Giraffe in the garden by Gorse Hill came from.  I rather fancy a Cobra half-hidden in my shrubbery.

The Hurlston Brook runs through the park, north of the lake, and its banks had Hogweed and  Himalayan Balsam. A big old Willow tree had branches leaning over towards the opposite bank, and we were pretty sure it was a Crack Willow.

A Coot was busily refurbishing a nest on the lake. Is she going to have a second brood? It looked like it.

As we were leaving the park we stopped to admire this lovely flowering shrub, some kind of Hebe.

Our tree points continue to mount up, now at 1135. The Crack Willow was worth 10, and we doubled the points from last week’s Spindle Tree by correctly answering the question “How does the Spindle tree get its name?”  A: Its wood was used for making spindles for spinning fibres into yarn.  We are scratching around for new birds, and we have been stuck on 1285 since 11th June. The only reasonably-likely additions to the list are Treecreeper, Bullfinch or Spotted Flycatcher, but we just haven’t come across them. We did well with wild flowers though, claiming six new ones today. Still climbing towards 1000 and now up to 865.

Public transport details: Train from Central Station at 10.10 to Ormskirk, arriving 10.40. Returned on the 2.50 train, arriving Central at 3.20.