Phil Smith

Dr Phil Smith: Wildlife notes October 2021

Post published:9 November 2021
Post category:Wildlife Notes

October had a total of 16 rain-days, being wet and windy early and late in the month, with a dry 10-day period in the middle. Gales in early October blew in masses of sand, deeply burying the rich strandline vegetation at Ainsdale that I highlighted in the September notes. The associated 10m high-tides washed up drifts of seaweed, presumably from North Wales, which will provide the nutrients for next summer’s strandline plants.

As in October last year, the relatively warm weather kept insects going longer than usual.

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Dr Phil Smith: Wildlife notes September 2021

Post published:12 October 2021
Post category:Wildlife Notes

It was another eventful month for nature on the Sefton Coast. One of the main attractions was the amazingly diverse strandline flora that developed on the shore between Ainsdale and Birkdale; I can’t remember seeing anything like it before.

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Phil Smith: Strandline vascular plants at Ainsdale

Post published:29 September 2021
Post category:Nature Notes

I thought I would spend a couple of hours on 3rd September 2021 recording the variety of strandline plants north of Ainsdale-on-Sea.This habitat is the best I have seen for at least ten years.

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Dr Phil Smith: Wildlife notes August 2021

Post published:16 September 2021
Post category:Wildlife Notes

My month with nature started well when Joyce and David Jarvis showed me two flowering Broad-leaved Helleborines at Ainsdale National Nature Reserve. I hadn’t seen this orchid on the Sefton Coast since 2008. Other notable plants during the month included a small colony of Whorl-grass that I found on a freshwater seepage zone on Hightown beach. It turned out to be the rare variety uniflora, largely confined to Western Scotland with only two known localities in England. While listing the associated species, I came across a plant that I couldn’t name but which seems to be Touch-me-not Balsam (Impatiens noli-tangere), not previously recorded for the Sefton Coast.

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