Butterfly watching

Big Butterfly Count

Being a citizen scientist for the Big Butterfly Count is a great opportunity for being aware of what’s flitting around in the garden, parks, countryside and seaside.

It’s a snapshot challenge hoping the little blighters will stay still long enough before taking off. (Memo to subject: And while you’re posing, please keep your wings open!)

Not exactly “butterfly season” in December, but here’s a reminder of what we have to look forward to.

Red Admiral

Six-spot Burnet, Speckled Wood, Common Blue

Eyed Hawk Moth

This was a “first” for me. What I thought was a crinkly leaf clinging to the wall was a stunning quivering Eyed Hawk Moth. Scary and fascinating.

Why are my fuchsias being eaten alive?

Further investigation revealed the culprits. Four Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillars, the size of my index finger, feasting to burst before hunkering down for their long metamorphosis.

You looking at me?

Butterfly forecast

Not so good at this time of the year.

Date for Diary

Big Butterfly Count 12 July – 4 August 2024.

Lytham Hall

A (not so) Silent Night

Lytham Hall has been transformed into a festive wonderland, exquisitely decorated to the theme of seasonal songs – a different tune playing in each room. I whiled away over an hour wandering on a magical journey.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

In the sumptuous dining room I found the signs for all twelve days, skilfully created by a team of talented volunteers.

How cute the 12 drummers drumming;
7 swans a swimming;
one of the 9 ladies dancing

Around the Hall

Stunning at every turn.

The Billiard Room

Transformed into a bustling little town (by Greg Anderton and his father), very reminiscent of Lytham!

My favourite – Jennie’s Fairies

Pretty Dolly Peg fairies dangling amongst the baubles on the Christmas tree in the Edwardian Room.

A visit will put a smile on the face
of the grouchiest Grinch!
It worked for me!

Thrills and spills – St Annes beach

Sickly perfumed vapes mingle with fusty tobacco and whiffs of cloying spliffs. Sausages, burgers and chips sizzle in hot fat. The Runaway Train chugs around the fairground. Burning fuel belches from the exhaust pipes of revving machines.

Fun and entertainment for all as the Cheshire Grasstrack Club returns to St Annes for the British Sandmasters Racing Championship 2023.

An obliging spectator – but he didn’t share!

On your marks. Get set. Go!

Strong winds and shifting sands make conditions challenging for the competitors. They lap it up.

Sand-storming racing at its exciting best

Kite-boarders in the distance harness the wind as quads, bikes, side-cars kick up a sandstorm.

They’ve gone home and the beach breathes again.

Hedgehog Awareness Week – 1-7 May 2022

British Hedgehog Preservation Society

Organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Hedgehog Awareness Week is taking place from 1-7 May 2022. It’s a brilliant means of bringing to our attention the problems hedgehogs face and how we can help. The website is full of downloadable informative leaflets, posters and colourings-in for youngsters.

Nocturnal visitors

Our nocturnal visitors are doing very well since they came out of hibernation. Since early March we’ve been putting Mr Johnson’s hedgehog food in the hedgehog feeding station. All gone the next morning.

If hogs visit your garden, there’ll be signs – deposits (that resemble slugs) left on the lawn and garden path!

How we can help hedgehogs

Create a hedgehog highway

Hogs travel up to 2 miles on their nightly wanderings. Give them access to your garden through a hole in the gate or fence, and be charmed seeing them shuffling through the shrubbery.

Hedgehog Highway - access for hedgehogs — *Hedgehog highway*

Provide a feeding station

Ours is basic and works. A few bricks, access in and out – but not for larger night-prowlers – and a lid to keep the food dry and the hogs safe. Fresh water is essential, particularly in dry weather. But no bread and milk. Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant and milk could kill them.

Simple to construct hedgehog feeding station without lid — *Feeding station without lid*

Feeding station with lid — *Feeding station without lid*

Make dens

Create safe havens. Piles of logs, sticks and leaf litter will give hogs a place to rest during the day, and somewhere to consider for hibernation later in the year.

Hedgehog hunting

It’s great fun to go hedgehog-hunting in the garden after dark. If startled a hog will stop in his/her tracks until the assumed danger has passed, and then shuffle off into the undergrowth.

Mating time

May is mating time. If you hear loud huffing and puffing it’s likely to be a male courting a female. She’ll give birth to 2-6 hoglets any time between May and September. After 6-8 weeks they’ll leave the nest and begin their solitary nightly explorations.

Hedgehog help

If you see a hog out during the daytime s/he needs help. Capture the creature (wear gardening gloves), gently place in a cardboard box, cover with an old towel and get in touch with your local hedgehog rescue centre or contact the British Hedgehog Preservation Society.

The gardener’s friend

Let’s do all we can to give our prickly friends the help they need to survive.

Young hedgehog in the feeding station — *One of last night’s hungry visitors* *(18/04/22)*

Newton Marsh

A584

We trek along the A584. A dirty, noisy dual carriageway called Preston New Road.

Why?

To find Newton Marsh. The OS map shows the marsh running alongside the A584. We’re not sure of access so park in a layby on the outskirts of Freckleton, and tramp over a mile along the A584. It’s horrible! Carling, Costa, Red Bull, Guinness, Johnnie Walker and other detritus gathers in the verges, along with a dead pheasant and mangled hare. We reach a turning to find industrial units, huge lorries and even more rubbish.

Then what?

It gets amazing. Whistling teal, pochard, wigeon, shovellers are all busy dabbling. The males are resplendent in their finest breeding colours. Lapwings swerve, tumble and dive over the marsh calling “peewit”. Golden plovers join in. Black-tailed godwits roost. A buzzard “pee-ows” in the distance. This is the attraction of Newton Marsh.

*Black-tailed godwits, pochards, wigeons*

*Black-tailed godwit* *– in breeding plumage*

Private land

Newton Marsh, close to the River Ribble, is privately owned with no access other than to view from the fence. It’s popular with regular birders, some with scopes, others spying through binoculars from their car window. One chap tells us there’s a snipe on the island. It is so well camouflaged we can barely see it – and then it moves its head.

*Find the snipe – centre of pic wedged between the rocks*

We’ve been back again, twice. Certainly not for the walk! On each occasion we’ve seen something amazing. Avocets today.

Thankfully we’ve found a layby only a quarter of a mile away. Roads, laybys, industrial estates – not our first choice for a walk – but worth it for the rewards of Newton Marsh.

Lytham Hall – woodland walks and snowdrops

This enriching woodland walk
through the grounds of Lytham Hall
has become a real favourite

*Swathes of snowdrops – a woodland carpet*

Lily Pond

Residents on the Lily Pond
include Mr & Mrs Teal
mingling with moorhens and mallards,
and high up in the treetops
nesting herons

*Mr Teal tending his coat of vibrant colours*

*Male and female heron in process of nest-building*

Herons lay 4-5 pale blue eggs
Incubation 25 days
Fledging 50 days
Maybe end of April
to see/hear their squawking young?

Ramshackle boathouse
tumbling into
the Lily Pond

Another thing to look forward to –
the restoration of the boathouse

Vermin control

Wrea Green, a rural village with the largest village green in Lancashire and an impressive duck pond (The Dub), was the start of a soggy field walk. Wellies essential. The first field was full of fieldfares and redwings busy feeding. Two hares bobbled about in the next field. A flash of streaky yellow took off from a field of maize stubble. Yellowhammer or siskin or greenfinch? Binoculars couldn’t keep up with them. Then a giant hare broke cover and scarpered. A kestrel surveyed the fields from a lofty telegraph perch, and sheep nibbled lush grass.

The footpath took us through a farm. “Vermin Control,” said the farmer with a laugh as I took a snapshot. “How many?” I asked. He shrugged. “Too many to count.” I counted fifteen! The vermin control gang wasn’t doing much apart from grooming, snoozing and lazing in the winter sunshine. I imagine it’s a different story at dusk and long into the night.

“Vermin Control” in the hayloft – You lookin’ at me?

On sentry duty,
sunning themselves outside the barn
(They do look a bit crotchety!)

The views along this enjoyable walk across the flat fields of the Fylde would have been very different back in the early 1900s. Just a few solitary farms and isolated houses linked by twisting lanes would have dotted the landscape. Today battalions of brick boxes have taken over the fields, spoiling the views, ruining the countryside. Such is progress.

Back home, Mr Pool went to put vegetable peelings in the compost bin. He signalled there was something of interest. I grabbed my camera and took a few chance snapshots of a magnificent sparrowhawk sitting on the garden fence, watching with caution. Possibly a juvenile female (male has orange eyes/female yellow). She swooped into the neighbour’s garden and then shot off. She’s a regular. She’ll be back.

An excellent day for winter-watching
(Rats! – last Winterwatch on the telly tonight)

Lytham Hall – a woodland walk

Lytham Hall has become our go-to when we feel the need to poddle along muddy footpaths, smell decaying leaves, and hear sweet birdsong ripple through bare winter branches.

Winter is a good time for listening and watching. There’s no leafy canopy for cover. Today’s bird count totalled 21 different species, all with their own distinctive voice.

It was like band practice: on vocals and lead guitar, Robin; on bass guitar, Jay; on keyboards, Jenny; on drums, Woody; with a full ensemble of backing singers. Glorious.

Out on the open farmland mistle thrushes and redwings search for grubs; little egrets stab for snacks; herons pose like statues. Over the treetops a crow and buzzard play chase.

Not all our feathered friends are close enough or stay still for a snapshot. This one obliged.

Lytham Hall is a ten-minute walk from Lytham Square; five-minutes from the station. For us it’s an energising 7-mile circular walk from our front door.

January snowdrops – a sign that spring isn’t far away

Snapshot gallery – clockwise:
animal hub – nosy goat ; Curtains Pond; Fughi;
animal hub – piggy’s siesta;
rhododendron in flower – in January;
Lily Pond

Our sightings 18/01/2022
Blackbird, Blue tit, Buzzard, Coot, Crow, Goldcrest, Great spotted woodpecker, Great tit, Heron, Jay, Little egret, Long-tailed tit, Mallard, Mistle thrush, Nuthatch, Redwing, Robin, Sparrowhawk, Teal, Wood pigeon, Wren

“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”

Blackpool’s glitzy mirror ball lost its shine and many of its 47,000 mirror tiles after being pelted by thrashing seas and howling gales over the years. It was removed from Blackpool’s South Promenade in November 2020 for renovation.

It’s on its way back.

The mirror ball was installed in 2002. It was created by artist Michael Trainor who was inspired by the mirror ball featured in Sydney Pollack’s Oscar-winning 1969 film, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”. It’s reputedly the world’s biggest mirror ball and is one of many other commissioned artworks known as “The Great Promenade Show”. Some of these, sadly, have fallen by the wayside.

But the mirror ball will soon be glittering again, reflecting the sea and sky and all who pass by.

As an aside: I remember south prom back in the day – a bit before Sydney Pollack’s film! We played in sunken gardens, sailed wooden lolly sticks in the boating pool, and quite often spent all day in the magnificent open-air swimming pool. All long gone – demolished for better things.

Unusual footprints – St Annes beach

The sandy beach
revealed a most unusual set of footprints

A deer?
On St Annes beach?

I followed the trail
and through binoculars
scoured the vast expanse
of the Ribble Estuary
There it was
A deer
On St Annes beach

Heading towards St Annes Pier – lost and confused

It galloped towards the pier,
past the beach huts,
in front of the saltmarsh and Fairhaven Lake,
across Granny’s Bay then up the River Ribble towards Lytham

Towards the beach huts – Blackpool Tower peeping over St Annes

At the rate it was going
it wouldn’t take long to reach Freckleton
where hopefully it would feel more at home
amidst fields and trees

Quite a sight seeing a deer (roe?)
taking a day trip to the seaside

	Bea Pool on Snow Bunting – Fairhaven…
	shazza on Snow Bunting – Fairhaven…
	Bea Pool on Butterfly watching
	shazza on Butterfly watching
	shazza on Lytham Hall