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...
Following on from a rainy December, January was another wet month. Although it rained on only about 14 days, there were two exceptionally wet periods, from 13th-16th and 18th-20th, the latter coinciding with named storm Christophe. This storm produced the wettest 3-days in Northwest England and North Wales since records began in 1891.
It was a wet one; measurable rain fell in Formby on 20 days during December. The 13th, 19th and 26th were especially damp, the latter coinciding with named storm ‘Bella’. It was also relatively mild, with frost largely restricted to a few mornings late in the month. There was no snow; indeed, it is now...
Although rain fell in Formby on 17 days, amounts were small. Therefore, November turned out to be much drier than October, with no change in the water-level at the Devil’s Hole. It was relatively mild with hardly any frost. As a result, occasional summer flowers, such as Evening Primrose, Ragwort and the Hybrid Stork’s-bill enlivened...