Wildlife Notes
Dr Phil Smith is a retired biology lecturer who was a Trustee of the Lancashire Wildlife Trust from 1970 to 2010. He has wide natural history interests, being especially enthusiastic about the flora and fauna of sand-dunes and salt-marshes. Spending much of his time on biological surveys to promote the understanding and conservation of Northwest wildlife, Phil is also a keen photographer.
In 2002, he was awarded an MBE for services to nature conservation. Phil has written over 300 scientific reports, articles and papers and two books, including The Sands of Time Revisited (2009) describing the history and natural history of the Sefton Coast sand-dunes.
In the series of monthly articles Phil describes some of the highlights of a life spent amongst nature in Merseyside.
With the Latest Wildlife Notes and Wildlife Notes 2012 onwards it is possible to click or tap on a thumbnail image in the document and view an enlarged image in stunning close up detail. Best viewed on a larger screen
To view previous monthly wildlife notes please click HERE
“The History of Human Influence on the Sefton Coast”
Dr. Phil Smith has provided an updated and fascinating (44 page) report
supported with a wide variety of fascinating images for our Civic Society pages.
To view please click here (pdf opens in a new tab)
Latest Wildlife Notes
Dr Phil Smith’s Wildlife Notes
SEPTEMBER 2025
According to the Met. Office, following on from a record dry summer, September was a wet month in the UK with rainfall in Sefton being about 50% above normal. This fits rather well with Rachael Parks daily measurement of precipitation in her Formby garden. She recorded 129 mm which is about 60% above average. Surprisingly, the sand-dune water-table rose by only about 5 cm during the month.
Crops, gardens and natural vegetation began to recover from the summer drought but, with some exceptions, the number and variety of insects collapsed. Most flowers had already finished, though a few Grass-of-Parnassus blooms could be seen in dune-slacks until the end of the month. However, the main source of nectar and pollen was flowering Ivy. I made numerous visits to favoured, south-facing Ivy patches at Oxford Road and Hesketh Road in Southport, Ravenmeols, Formby, and a newly discovered clump at Kenilworth Road, Ainsdale. Apart from abundant Common Wasps, the Ivy attracted encouraging numbers of the Ivy Bee. About the same size as a Honeybee, this charming solitary bee has a chestnut thorax and a stripy, humbug-like abdomen. It colonised southern England from continental Europe in 2001, rapidly spreading northwards until the first Sefton record by Pete Kinsella in 2018 at Crosby. It has now reached south-east Scotland. In the first half of September, there was also the occasional Hornet Plumehorn on the Ivy. Our largest and most spectacular hoverfly, this is another insect responding to climate change over the last 20 years or so by moving north. It is a good mimic of the European Hornet, which has been slower to reach us but is now being found occasionally in the Northwest. Pete Kinsella, sent me an excellent photo of an enormous queen hornet on Ivy in Crosby. I also bumped into Pete at the Ravenmeols Ivy on 23rd. He pointed out some of the less common hoverflies, including the Black-horned Smoothtail and Pale-knobbed Lucent. There were also both males and females of the Shieldbug Fly, an unusual-looking insect with enormous red eyes, that has the unfortunate habit of parasitising shieldbugs. On the last day of the month, the Hesketh Road Ivy was graced by a large Lemon Marsh Fly, a hoverfly that often appears as a migrant. Butterflies were generally thin on the ground but, as usual, the superb Red Admiral put in an appearance. My best day-total of this butterfly was 22 on 25th. I also spotted two rather worn Painted Ladies on the Ivy; otherwise, there were just a few of the continuously brooded Speckled Wood and the odd Comma.
As a change from searching Ivy, I took my sweep-net along a favourite woodland walk on the edge of Formby. Sweeping Alder produced several tiny Parent Shieldbugs, together with much larger and brightly coloured Hawthorn Shieldbugs. One of them had what looked like a parasite egg on its thorax. Also in my net was an autumnal member of the soldierfly family, a Twin-spot Centurion. The highlight, however, on Sycamore, was a vivid red-and-green leafhopper that I didn’t recognise. The reference books showed it was a Rhododendron Leafhopper, an American insect that was introduced to southern England in the 1930s and is working its way north. We seem to be close to its northern limit on this side of the country, with two previous Sefton records in 2024.
Another September highlight, though I only saw photographs, was an enormous caterpillar found on the seawall at Banks on 13th. I thought it was probably a Large Elephant Hawkmoth but crucial features were concealed by grass. A better photo emailed a few days later confirmed it was actually a Convolvulus Hawkmoth, a species that rarely breeds in Britain, being usually seen as a scarce migrant. (photo courtesy Mark Nightingale)
It will already be evident that I didn’t do much bird-watching in September. On my way down Range Lane, Formby, on 17th to finish off one of my research projects in the Devil’s Hole, I spotted two Grey Wagtails on puddles. Hardly a rarity but a nice bird to see all the same. The puddles also supported a pair of egg-laying Common Darters. Earlier in the month, I called in briefly at the RSPB’s Marshside Nature Reserve. In front of the main hide were about 1000 Black-tailed Godwits, perhaps recently arrived from Iceland, together with a Little Egret, Cattle Egret and Common Sandpiper. Less welcome were 250 feral Canada Geese and 100 Greylags. I was also concerned to see two large diggers creating a deep, steep-sided trench across the pristine saltmarsh between Marshside Road and Hesketh Road for a distance of about 1.2 km. A friend described it as a “tank-trap”! At a site meeting with the Reserve Manager a couple of days later, it was explained that the ditch was intended to prevent dog-walkers getting to the outer marsh and disturbing breeding and wintering birds. A fly-past Marsh Harrier helped to reinforced the point. Finally, Pete Kinsella sent me a lovely photograph taken on 24th of an almost completely white ‘leucistic’ Sanderling roosting on the shore at Hall Road, Blundellsands. It was also photographed at New Brighton on 3rd December 2024 and 14th February 2025. An almost identical Sanderling was recorded in Hampton Beach State Park, New Hampshire, USA, on October 29th 2019. Could it be the same bird?