Local naturalist, Dave Owen, discovered a Giant Lacewing (Osmylus fulvicephalus) at Sankey Valley Country Park. This locally rare species has only been sighted once in St.Helens, back in 1988 at the Goyt woodland, Carr Mill about a mile and a half north of Sankey Valley Country Park. Hopefully more of these very impressive insects can be recorded in our area and...
Where are our garden butterflies?
The cold 2021 spring and early summer seems to have had an impact on some of our garden butterflies – so far in 2021 nearly all of the 13 species, monitored as part of the British Trust for Ornithology’s (BTO) Garden BirdWatch (GBW), are being seen in fewer gardens and are also appearing later than...
Fungi Fun: Brackets
Too early for most of the traditional fungi with gills but still a lot of interesting bracket fungi to be appreciated.
British and Irish gardens fuel a novel reverse migration for Blackcaps in winter
The allure of garden feeders has transformed the biology of a bird that visits Britain and Ireland for the winter. New research involving the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Oxford University and the Max Planck Institute, and just published in the journal Global Change Biology, provides further evidence of how humans are shaping the natural...
