Rob Duffy

Rob Duffy: From the Library; Edward Wilson

Post published:13 November 2018
Post category:Nature Notes

EDWARD O. WILSON ( at 89) is one of the world’s renowned myrmecologists (studied ants) and has been an enthusiastic naturalist since the age of 7. Growing up in the Alabama swamplands, natural history kept him on an even keel through broken schooling, parental separation and his father’s suicide. Ensconced at Harvard, since the early 1950’s, he pioneered the exploration of New Guinea as an entomologist and developed the study of desert island re-colonisation in the Florida Keys.

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Rob Duffy: Sidewalk Botanist, Mid-July notes.

Post published:25 July 2018
Post category:Nature Notes Wildlife Notes

First signs of autumn are already with us in the form of ripe blackberries, rowan berries and hawthorn “haws”. Soon other trees and bushes will follow.

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Rob Duffy: Sidewalk Botanist Goes Brookside: A short excursion down Court Hey Brook

Post published:9 July 2018
Post category:Nature Notes

Court Hey Brook is some 680 metres long within its Park and is crossed by two footbridges, one in the “middle” and the other at the southern end. It was never a boundary within the Victorian estate which ran uphill to the present Rimmer Avenue and it barely appears on any maps. It is hard to believe that its hydrology was significantly altered about a decade ago (United Utilities); designed to protect the east bank’s back gardens from being undercut by waters that have subsequently failed, the remnant sandbanks seem now arcane relics.

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Rob Duffy: Sidewalk Botanist-June Notes

Post published:23 June 2018
Post category:Nature Notes

The “scrapes” in Court Hey Park are as dry as a bone and can be traversed to inspect the wetland flora-the flora of the pavement cracks too has altered completely under the unrelenting Sun but, with the disappearance of the widespread Thale Cress, many species, particularly Willowherbs, are surviving. Perhaps this is the time to get to grips with this common garden weed? Identification is not too difficult, depending on the shape of the stigma, whether there are ridges on the stem, the length of the petiole, or the length of the leaves and pods, to name but a few features. But, beware of hybridisation!

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