February 2022 will be remembered for a cluster of three named storms: Dudley, Eunice and Franklin, which arose from an exceptionally active North Atlantic Jet Stream. They caused considerable disruption nationally, including flooding in some areas. Fortunately, we escaped the worst of it. Although it rained here on 21 days, most of it was light,...
Despite being reasonably common, widespread, and easily identifiable from its vocal behaviour, we know surprisingly little about the changing fortunes of the UK’s breeding Tawny Owl population. There is evidence for an ongoing but shallow long-term decline in the population since the mid-1980s, but this evidence comes from studies that involve daytime surveys by volunteers....
Another month of record breaking weather started with the warmest New Year’s Day ever. It was also the sunniest January recorded for England, though we experienced many days of continuous cloud cover. Finally, in contrast to December, it was particularly dry, rainfall in England being less than 40% of average. Here, only eight days had...
Extremely wet weather and frosty mornings prevented me from doing much foraying since Christmas. I have managed to get out for a bit of exercise round local parks in south Liverpool but even that was difficult as everywhere is so wet and muddy. All the expected species were present such as Flammulina velutipes (Velvet Shank), and Clitocybe nebularis (Clouded...