Heritage Walks at Butterfly Park

Pond dipping at New Ferry Butterfly Park

This year, New Ferry Butterfly Park will be participating in Wirral's Heritage Open Days. The events give access to buildings of interest and also provide a range of walking tours and activities to focus attention on our local history, heritage and culture. For the full programme, take a look at the Visit Wirral website.

There will be two opportunities to take part in the guided walk around the Butterfly Park:

Sunday 2nd September and Sunday 9th September

2 p.m.

The walk will explore the industrial heritage of this former railway goods yard (brick making and railway operation), and the natural history now it is an invertebrate nature reserve. This short walk is only about 600 m long but there is much to see. The walk will take 1.5 hours, with pond dipping and other children's activities available.

Admission is free but donations are welome.

The park is signposted from Bebington Road and the access is between Aldi and the railway bridge. Some parking is available inside the Butterfly Park.

The lower half of the Park is disabled-accessible.

Booking is essential; a maximum of 30 places are available for each day. Contact Paul Loughnane (0151 645 8937) or Hilary Ash (0151 327 5923).

Comma Project Open Evening

Pamela Sullivan will be presenting her Favela art installation at a viewing on Thursday 16th August from 6 to 8 p.m.

New Ferry Comma Project, 66 Bebington Road, Wirral.

Parkgate BioBlitz

A BioBlitz is an event to organise a large number of people to record all the species they can find within a given area over a short period of time.

On Friday 31st August and Saturday 1st September there will be a BioBlitz at Parkgate, covering the different species and habitats found in the area. Click on the poster above for more information.

For further details contact Adam Britt by email or telephone him on 07841 249760.

Pond Dipping In The Rain

It must be the image to characterise this summer - pond-dipping in the rain! Fortunately it turned out to be a passing shower and 37 people enjoyed lots of pond creatures, including efts (baby newts), water boatmen, back-swimmers and some fearsome-jawed water beetle larvae and dragonfly larvae.

The sun came out while we led a guided walk and brought quite a number of butterflies and bees with it. Both are suffering from the weather and all over the country, numbers are well down on what we usually expect. However, we have seen most of the species we would expect at this time of year on New Ferry Butterfly Park - Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Comma, Red Admiral, Skippers and Whites. The missing one is Painted Lady, which usually migrates up to here in June - no doubt they all decided to stay somewhere drier.

No one dared to take up the challenge to try scything - so that was left for the Wirral Countryside Volunteers to do the next day.