Owls in the Baltic Triangle – image taken May 2021
This week’s blog post is on urban wildlife; what the big city has to offer that could possibly compare to the natural world of our green and pleasant spaces.
It starts with lichen and mosses: opening the bedroom curtains, my eyes are drawn to the pop of spongy, furry bright green moss on the gritty sandstone apex tiles below. It is accompanied by a flat, pale substance that resembles guano (which would not be unusual here) but is some sort of lichen – I think. It just goes to show that, even in the well-known city environs, some things are not easily identifiable.
Moss and lichen on the apex roof tile
The living room looks out onto Liverpool Marina, and breakfast is often brightened by a brief sighting of the female kingfisher perched on the boardwalk below. Even if she’s not there – and she seems to be only a winter visitor from presumably colder local climes – the resident herring gull pair are usually on next door’s roof, or prospecting for mussels at the water’s edge. Clever birds, they fly up with their prize, drop it, then swoop quickly down to see if it has opened enough for them to extract the juicy morsel inside. The crows have taken to copying this behaviour – evidence of learning spreading between species.
Speaking of gulls, there is a resident pair of great black-backed gulls just across the road at the Watersports Centre, and I have seen them eat some truly gruesome things over the years. The shrieks of horror from the balcony below me one summer’s day indicated that the occupants had also witnessed a scene so upsetting that – although indelibly seared into my memory – I will refrain from including here. They do like a dead eel as well – but getting into it can prove challenging, and I have watched one of the pair spend a good hour pecking and pulling at a particularly rubbery specimen (viewable on Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/status/1399600235664527365, from June 2021). The cormorants which can be seen speeding like tiny torpedoes through the shallower water bypass the issue of penetrating tough eel-skin, preferring instead to swallow the writhing creatures alive and whole, which is another eye-widening sight. I really don’t know how they get them down, and it can take quite a while and lots of throat gulps. Occasionally, the cormorants end up in strange places, as in the picture below.
Cormorant on the herring gull pair’s roof – taken December 2019
There are also moorhens, a pair of mute swans, an occasional redshank and even a grey heron, which takes advantage of the light pollution to fish here late at night. A pair of Canada geese often drop in, too, announcing their arrival with frantic honks.
Out of the side window lies the Mersey. I could conceivably ‘tick’ harbour porpoise without leaving home, but so far haven’t done so, although I have seen them further upriver, and a grey seal, and even a common scoter one particularly stormy day in February. The sunsets are beautiful, too – I have seen combinations of purples, pinks, reds, oranges and golds in the years I’ve lived here. Below are just a few.
Sublime sunset over the Mersey – taken February 2023
Fiery sunset over the Mersey – image taken November 2018
A more muted sunset over the Mersey – image taken November 2019
But back to the urban environment: stepping outside into a gloomy world of grey concrete buildings interspersed with red sandstone, black tarmac, neon yellow lines and signs, traffic lights, vehicles and the rest of the Anthropocene can be overwhelming, and disheartening. What wildlife can possibly live let alone flourish here? But I can hear dunnocks singing their jazzy little ditties, goldfinches ‘pew-pewing’ from bare branches, the alarm ‘chuck’ of a male blackbird as it rushes under a hedge, a robin’s spring song. They have found a way to exist alongside us here – in the too-few hedges, trees and shrubs that dot this unnatural, artificial landscape. A couple of years ago, I was delighted to find three newly fledged wrens fluttering around my car from a nearby shrub. Funny how the gardeners hired to maintain the communal gardens say that birds don’t nest here whenever I ask them not to cut back the vegetation during spring and summer…
Walking into the city centre along The Strand, a busy dual carriageway, brings a few dainty delights: pavement plants like common mouse-ear chickweed, dandelions – and even poppies in the summer – nestled among the coffee cups, ciggie butts and chewing gum, sure, but still there, still surviving, still bringing joy, if you look for them.
Pavement plants amongst human detritus
On the way home, I take a different route: past gardens planted with ornamental cherries and palms, green lawns, some overgrown, but all the better for invertebrates to hide and thrive. A brief aside: since the pandemic, the ‘weeds’ that grow amongst the tiny paving blocks at the marina have remained unsprayed, providing a feast for swans and geese and a hiding place for invertebrates, to the delight of insectivorous birds like pied wagtail.
Flora in the urban jungle
A community of house sparrows makes its presence known, loud cheeps ringing through the polluted air, bringing a smile to the face of this passer-by. A pair of lesser black-backed gulls laugh maniacally from a nearby house roof – a deeper sound than the ubiquitous herring gull squawks. “Chiswick!” cries a pied wagtail as it flies overhead, bowled along by the breeze. Numbers of these diminutive black and white birds roost communally in trees along Bold Street, a lively thoroughfare, in the winter – or they used to.
Passing through the Baltic Triangle, buddleia growing out of brickwork overhangs colourful artwork, and artistic depictions of wildlife – fox, dragonfly, even bluebottle – brighten brick walls in an eye-catching celebration of nature. (Unfortunately, I can’t credit the unknown artists but give my thanks to them here.)
Artwork and buddleia
Baltic Dragonfly – image taken November 2020
Fox and bluebottle
Although it’s no longer there, I have to include the amazing Bowland Hare, a sculpture that occupied the Baltic Triangle plinth for a while in 2020, a tribute the the brown hare, whose numbers have been in decline for over 50 years.
Bowland Hare sculpture by Margan Wouda – image taken February 2020
Home at last, and first of all a quick check for that azure jewel in the city’s crown: there she is, watching for sticklebacks, an unexpected wild wonder bringing joy to the watcher.
Liverpool Marina kingfisher – image taken through binoculars November 2021
Liverpool Marina kingfisher – typical view