Wildlife Notes

An unremarkable month for weather, December 2017 started and ended relatively mild with a cold snap in the middle. Many parts of the country had considerable snow-fall but, as usual, barely a flake was seen here. However, it was a little wetter than average with measureable rain on 20 days, though many of those had little more than a period of drizzle. Happily, the sand-dune water-table continued to rise, Devil’s Hole showing an increase of 15cm (6 inches) during the month, with surface water appearing at last in the deepest sections.

October is supposed to be our wettest month but, with measurable precipitation on only nine days, this time it did not live up to its reputation. Confounding the forecasters, one of two named storms produced no rain at all! The trend for mild autumns continued, with several warm spells and no frost at all. Regularly monitoring of the dune water-table showed that it started to rise, as would be expected, surface-water appearing in the deepest slacks but not in the Devil’s Hole, which remained stubbornly dry.

The unsettled weather of July continued into the first half of August with measurable rainfall on 11 days up to 18^th but then hardly any for the rest of the month. This meant that the dune flora recovered somewhat from the severe early summer drought, this being reflected in a fantastic display of Grass-of-Parnassus, especially on the New Green Beach north of Ainsdale-on-Sea. Even I baulked at trying to count them but there were certainly tens of thousands in what is probably the largest British population of this nationally declining plant. Thousands more were at the Devil’s Hole, though this colony was down on the numbers present a few years ago.

There could hardly be a greater contrast; Edinburgh had the wettest June ever, while desperately needed rain fell here on only eight days during the month. Though limited in quantity, it allowed some recovery of sand-dune vegetation and even stimulated a little Natterjack Toad activity, a few late spawn strings being found, though they didn’t survive long. The dune water-table continued to fall, partly due to a heat-wave from 17^th to 21^st, including the hottest June day nationally since 1976.