July was the season of the Ragwort, which, with Wild Parsnip and Wild Carrot, proliferated on the Sefton dunes to an extent I have never previously witnessed in over 50 years. “Ten-thousand saw I at a glance” was more appropriate to Ragwort than to Wordsworth’s Daffodils. Ragwort has the popular reputation of being poisonous to livestock, often leading to it being ‘controlled’, even on nature reserves. However, recent publications have pointed out that it is only a problem if cut and incorporated into hay or silage when it loses its distastefulness. This plant is a crucial nectar source for a wide variety of insects in late summer, as well as a food plant for specialists. The latter include the Cinnabar Moth whose black and orange banded caterpillars are such a familiar sight. Not so this year, their numbers being well down. This applied more widely, the apparent dearth of insects being reported nationally. One possible explanation is that the wet winter and spring affected ground nesters, such as wasps. Nevertheless, there was plenty of ‘quality’ on show along our coast.
One advantage of being interested in sects is that something new is always likely to turn up. Many of my best finds were in the ‘Ringlet Glade’ at Ravenmeols where, as well as counting 30 Ringlets, I found my first Golden-bloomed Grey Longhorn. This stunning southern beetle has recently reached us on its way north. The same visit produced my first Verrall’s Meadow Fly, Sefton being the northern limit in Britain for this rare hoverfly. I thought it was the similar Little Meadow Fly until Pete Kinsella put me right from photos. A pair of Gatekeepers posed nicely for their portrait, while a Banded Demoiselle was about 3 km from its usual home on Downholland Brook. Also in the glade, was a strangely elongated Pennant Wasp which parasitises solitary bees. This is another southern insect with few records for our region. I had only seen one before. Even rarer was an Agrimony Stem-sawfly. Distribution maps show some in the south and east as far north as Norfolk but none for the Northwest, though Pete Kinsella tells me he had one in June at Ainsdale. During one of my favourite walks on the outskirts of Formby, I spotted an unfamiliar fat, black creature high on an Alder. It turned out to be the uncommon Blotch-winged Honeysuckle Sawfly. This was new to me and even Pete hasn’t seen one! Also there was an impressive Wasp Plumehorn, a hoverfly that mimics of hornets and wasps and whose larvae feed on wasp grubs in their nests.
During a trip to Hightown dunes, I sat down for a rest close to a colony of busy Silvery Leaf-cutter Bees and watched them carrying pieces of leaf back to their nest holes. Another movement revealed a smart black and white Large Sharp-tailed Bee hanging around near the colony. It is reported that this bee parasitises Coastal Leaf-cutters, not Silvery Leaf Cutters. Maybe it hadn’t read the books! Another recent arrival on our coast, the Large Sharp-tail is near to the northern edge of its British distribution. Continuing my walk, I was delighted to find a Natterjack toadlet in a nearby scrape, where I began the annual task of removing invading Sea Buckthorn. Walking back along the shore, produced a decent count of 37 Isle of Man Cabbage plants where I expected coastal erosion had washed them away.
While surveying plants on the Green Beach north of Ainsdale, I was caught in an unexpected shower and sheltered behind a convenient Alder bush. Several notable insects had the same idea, including a strikingly colourful Three-lined Soldierfly and the nationally scarce Six-spotted Wasp-cuckoo. As with others, this solitary wasp is close to its northern limit in Sefton, where it parasitises Gorytes sand-wasps, also newly arrived in the region.
Joyce and David Jarvis, Steve Cross and Daniel Argent joined me to complete our coastwide survey of the Red-listed ‘Vulnerable’ Sea Bindweed. We mapped and measured the areas of eight colonies, totalling 2582m2 between Hightown and Marshside. None of six sites recorded in 2010 had been lost, while two new ones were found. Overall, the plant has increased in area by 46%, despite an apparent decline in habitat quality towards taller, coarser vegetation.
Late in the month Nick Thompson alerted me to emergency works by United Utilities to repair a sewer pipe at Crosby Coastal Park. His photos showed enormous excavations near to one of the country’s rarest plants, Dune Wormwood, with only two British localities. Fearing the worst, I dashed down to Crosby finding, with great relief, that the diggers had missed the plant by about 60 m. While there, I resurveyed this great rarity, recording eight patches covering 33.5 m2. When Mike Wilcox and I found it in 2004, there was one patch of less than 1 m2. I couldn’t help wondering what consultations took place on such major works in a designated Local Wildlife Site.
