In Pursuit of Butterflies

by Matthew Oates

  As the Emperor season was on the wane, I migrated on to the South Downs and walked the length of the West Sussex downs from Harting Downs to the Adur, a young man with long hair, a rucksack and a small tent, furtively watched by locals in quiet rural pubs and giggled at by teenage girls at bus stops. I had no agenda and took no particular route, following my intuition or being guided by the spirit, Holy or otherwise. I even spent a comfortable night, alone, on Chanctonbury Ring, naively oblivious of its status as one of the most haunted places in Britain. All I knew about it was that the young Laurie Lee had slept there, time ago, when he was walking out one midsummer morning. It was a rather peaceful star-filled night in fact, but then I wore a Jay's feather in my hat. Marbled Whites were everywhere, often in clouds, though ageing fast. Here and there were Chalkhill Blue colonies, whilst Dark Green Fritillaries battled against the wind on downland crests. But this was not a butterflying expedition, it was an exploration of a previously unknown hinterland, a pushing back of bounds, and a celebration of summer in the south country. I took with me W H Hudson's Green Mansions, one of the strangest books in the English language, an allegory on humankind's relationship with Nature. It tells of a young man's discovery of, and love for, a tropical forest bird-girl, Rima, who dresses in a smock of spider webs. As he penetrates further into the jungle – no mere forest this – he loses his European identity and falls in love with Rima, who of course embodies Nature. She is a shape-shifter – girl, bird, butterfly, flower, jungle monkey, the lot. She falls for the young man, of course, for she loves all things, and even more predictably he kills her, in one of her animal manifestations, whilst out hunting. Finally, and symbolically, he returns to civilisation bearing Rima's ashes in an ossuary. I had planned to visit Hudson's grave, in Worthing cemetery, but went off the idea after accidentally leaving the book behind in a pub somewhere along the way. Of course, Green Mansions was not on my university course reading list, little that I read was. I could never have written a critical essay on it anyway, for it spoke above the academic level, to the human soul itself. And as for seeking Rima, I had already found her, only her name was Iris, or was it Iole? Years later I discovered that Edward Thomas's mentor, the great Victorian nature writer Richard Jefferies, is buried in the same Worthing cemetery. Years later still, I visited to scatter rose petals on both graves.

  Life was directionless in 1974. I was supposed to be contemplating Heidegger's ‘Yet poetically man dwells upon this earth’, but it was too blindingly obvious for lengthy consideration, especially when Keats's ‘The poetry of earth is never dead’ is added. Fortunately, the butterflies held firm, and held me firm with them, though the Purple Emperor was rather a shadow of himself that year. Perhaps I arrived in the woods too late in the Emperor season, having hitch-hiked and wandered around the Highlands in search of the Mountain Ringlet, that dusky denizen of the high hills, who flies only in the warmth of the sun and vanishes into tussocks when mountain clouds come scudding over. By the time I found a colony, high on Ben Lawers, a greater butterfly was calling. But foolishly, I took a lengthy detour, via the New Forest. I had only visited the Forest briefly and superficially once before, passing through en route to the Isle of Wight, and knew little of it, other than that it was the spiritual home of British lepidopterists and that it had been even more ruthlessly vandalised by the conifer revolution than the West Sussex woods. Despite seeing, for the first time, Silver-washed Fritillary in numbers and some impressive High Brown Fritillaries feeding on tall Marsh Thistles around Ramnor Inclosure, north of Brockenhurst, I did not feel at home there at all. The sallows were absent, the very soil itself seemed wrong – too acidic – and much of the vegetation was grazed and browsed to obvious entomological detriment. I was not ready for the New Forest. I belonged elsewhere, somewhere that was still itself.

  Eventually arriving at Southwater, I found it was the year of the Purple Hairstreak. They abounded, in far greater numbers than before, putting on spectacular evening flights high up along the wood edges, even well away from their beloved oaks. On July 23rd, around 5.30 pm, the diary records that forty or fifty could be seen in a vista along one short stretch of oak edge, a vista less than 80 metres wide. Finally, on the 26th, I cracked what they were up to on those warm, still early evenings – doing their courtship and mating. At 6.30 pm that evening, after a damp day, I watched a pair join and mate, staying paired, motionless, wings closed, within an oak leaf spray, until separating fifty minutes later at 7.20. So that's what they were up to!

  There were ‘Black Admirals’ again, two of them, though this time I instantly recognised them for what they were. However, the Emperor was aloof and distant, having forsaken his slurry lagoon. With the wondrous benefit of hindsight I can suggest why: I had arrived just a little too late in the flight season, after all the females had emerged and been mated, and had missed the period during which the males search the sallows. But they nonetheless put on some good shows. At last I watched females laying eggs inside the sallow bushes, and again watched a magnificent display of battling males around Osiris's birches. I even discovered that after hot days, during which they take a lengthy siesta, they may indulge in an evening flight, mingling with, and often attacking, Purple Hairstreaks. Holly Blues were on the increase again, having vanished during the rotten summer of 1972, and White-letter Hairstreaks were popping up all over the place, even in the George & Dragon down at Dragons Green.

  I found my first Sparrowhawk's nest, which sounds ridiculous until it is remembered that the bird was then only beginning to recover from the effects of DDT poisoning and decades of predator persecution. Indeed, I think I saw my first ever Sparrowhawk in 1972. The adults were incredibly wary, and utterly silent, nesting high in an old oak above a woodland pond, rearing two young. These left the nest on July 28th, but remained in the nearby oaks for a couple of days. It is strange to recall that prior to 1974 I had seen far more of the Hobby, itself a rarity then, which had nested annually in the lonely Brooks Green woods since at least 1971.

  The remainder of the good summer of 1974 was spent working in a factory that made plastic lipstick holders, talking cricket with migrant workers from Pakistan. Students do a lot of utterly pointless things, but then a great many people have to perform generally pointless tasks in order to earn a living. The lipstick holders were sent to the other side of the country, where lipstick was inserted, before they were transported 200 miles in another direction to be packed into boxes, only to be winged to a distribution centre near to where they had started out. In due course, the firm went burst.

  Evening flight (ψυχή)

  Where the evening sky hangs still,

  Shafts of July sun stretch softly

  Warm along the wood edge oaks;

  Living dust ascends within the heat,

  In particles, miasmic and opaque,

  To greet the climax of the day;

  For there, just there, entirely there,

  Within the sun's last radiance,

  Grey sprites of frenzied vibrancy

  Circle dance the living air,

  In celebration of Midsummer's days;

  Engulfed within the moment that is all

  And everything to those in courtship

  Of a life beyond an evening of eternity.

  Then pray, my spirit, deftly pray

  That you might join the dance of Psyche,

  And these small butterflies that worship her,

  In tones of iridescent purple and of humble grey,

  Before they drift into the forest night

  To mate for now, and for eternity.

  7 Walden

  Anyone with an interest in British butterflies in the mid-1970s would have seized the opportunity to move to East Hampshire. My mother, who had backed me through thick and very thick, provided me with such an opportunity. John Heath's Provisional Atlas of British Butterflies had recently been published, indicating that over forty species occurred there. This was due largely to the varied geology and habitat diversity
, but also to assiduous recording by Dr J W O Holmes, a retired GP and good all-round entomologist who moved to Linford, near Bordon, in the mid-1960s. The district was eulogised by no less a mortal than the Baron de Worms, in his regular jottings in The Entomologist's Record which I had studied in the university library, whilst failing to research an essay on Dickens or whatever. Selborne, the birthplace of natural history, was close by, though on perusing Gilbert White's Natural History it was disappointing to discover that he only once mentions butterflies, and then only to describe a vagrant Swallowtail bumbling down Selborne High Street. Consequently, Gilbert should be mentioned just this once in these chapters. More importantly, I now lived close to Edward Thomas's heartland. I knew Thomas more as a superb writer of rural prose than as a poet, and relished the prospect of getting close to him in spirit. So the decision was easily made, though first university had to be completed – and although it was in theory a privilege to be there I was in fact bored, intellectually, senselessly so at times. That was not at all unique in those days.

  The winter of 1974/75 was mild and wet, and the spring late. Heavy snow fell in southern England at the end of March. The sallow blossom was behind, though the Willow Warblers arrived on time in early April. I visited Alice Holt Forest, just south of Farnham, on April Fools’ Day, enticed there by de Worms's accounts of stirring Doings (to introduce a Victorian collectors’ term) involving iris, paphia and camilla – Purple Emperor, Silver-washed Fritillary and White Admiral.

  Southwater Forest was in striking distance, somewhere along the dreamy A272, and was visited during the second week of April in calm, largely cloudy weather. The woods were starting to dry out, in anticipation of summer. I camped out in some secret place in the woods and was woken abruptly at dawn. A cockerel started it all, a clarion some way off to the west, sounding off at 5 am. At 5.15 the misanthropic Wood Pigeons commenced their daily prophecies of doom, in massed ranks. Fifteen minutes later the woods erupted with a vibrancy almost beyond human understanding as a multitude of joyous Blackbirds and Song Thrushes announced the day. The whole experience was Sublime, in the true Picturesque meaning of the term. The dawn chorus is indeed best heard from within the sanctuary of a sleeping bag within a tent, otherwise one is simply too cold to appreciate its rapture.

  The larger part of two days was spent searching for White Admiral larvae. These were still in hibernation, concealed within their winter hibernacula – the brown withered remnants of Honeysuckle leaves spun up into a crude tent with caterpillar silk, and fastened to the stem with more silk. Mostly, the hibernacula dangled down by a silk thread from the stem, drifting aimlessly in any breeze. The secret is to search in steady light, and watch for movement caused by the breeze or your breath. As I watched, one larva, a tiny brown and grey spiny creature, emerged from his tent, crawled up his silk thread and commenced to feed on an unfurling leaf. Shortly afterwards, an early Red Admiral flew down Crookhorn Lane. A good omen, as in that era early spring Red Admirals were distinctly rare. A summer was being born.

  Returning, after university ended, on Midsummer Day, there was only one thing to do – lose myself in the woods for the duration of the Purple Emperor season, and record every detail. I had sold my album collection to fund it. There were no plans beyond that, for beyond it little mattered. Thoreau was to be my guide: ‘Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves,’ he wrote. I was utterly lost in the wonder of that summer; and seriously lost, in that I knew – and had known all along – precisely what I wanted, and perhaps needed, to do in life, but knew not how to do it, let alone how to resource it. That is an issue common to many young people. But all that could wait. Time alone created problems and time alone could resolve them. One thing I had determined was that I would never again allow the exams system to spoil a summer, for May and June had been good, too good, and had been wasted. More pertinently, the first Silver-washed Fritillary was seen in Alice Holt Forest on June 25th and the first White Admiral on the 28th. There I met John Clarke, a young biology teacher who at that time collected butterflies in a modest manner, but shortly afterwards converted into an ardent birder. He filled my mind with impressive tales of iris, paphia and camilla. We drove to Jubilee Hill, a heathland summit near Aldershot, where Silver-studded Blues were emerging in great numbers. A day or so later John returned, and collected no fewer than five halved-gynandromorphs – excessively rare specimens wherein one pair of wings is male and the other female, royal blue and dull brown in this case.

  In three days I explored Alice Holt, a mix of oaks mostly planted around 1820 and younger conifer plantations, then moved east to Southwater. There the butterfly season was a couple of days more advanced, and was promising great things. A blue Jay's feather was promptly found, lying on the ride for me. There were hairstreaks in the air, but not so much the Purple Hairstreak, the previous year's butterfly, and denizen of the oaks, but the White-letter Hairstreak. Hitherto, this had been an elusive creature, seen only in some years, usually high up over the tall English Elms or sprawling Wych Elms that were scattered about the district, but 1975 was its annus mirabilis. It was also its death knell, for Dutch elm disease was burgeoning. Elms, which had previously been secreted away as singletons or scattered clumps within a well treed landscape dominated by mature oaks, suddenly sprang to prominence, made salient by the intrusive autumn-like foliage of premature death. Early signs of Dutch elm disease had been evident in that part of West Sussex during the hot summer of 1970, but it only rose to prominence there in 1975. In other landscapes, of course, elms were the dominant tree and the transformation was acute, but here the dying of the elms went largely unnoticed, except by resident naturalists.

  The small dark White-letter Hairstreak butterflies dispersed, in search of nectar in the early July heat and also in search of healthy trees. Throughout that wondrous July I witnessed their efforts to find safe havens, but there was none. In scores they fluttered first around, then away from the dying elms at Southwater, Christ's Hospital and Coolham in West Sussex, and along the Upper Greensand hangers in East Hampshire. I have not seen them since in such numbers, or with such regularity within a landscape, and never will again. I learnt that they were most active in mid-morning, before the day heated up fully, and then became quiescent. The males would squabble over the elms or the crowns of adjoining Ash trees, whilst in search of receptive females. Periodically two males would meet up in flight over the tree canopy, and spiral up together in a vertical dog-fight, before separating and dropping back down to the canopy again. With four of our five hairstreaks, and Emperors of course, one looks up, not down. They had favoured bramble patches too, where each afternoon they could be found, crawling around in search of – was it simply nectar, or something else? – for the flowers they visited had often dropped their petals. (Holly Blues behave similarly.) Their favoured brambles were often sparse, shaded patches that attracted few other butterflies.

  The July weather was largely benign, with weakening bands of rain coming across at night, prolonged spells of gentle undemanding sunshine by day, and atmospheric pressure wanting to build. Butterflying, and Emperoring in particular, does not entail hours of walking, but eternities of standing about, watching and waiting. Patience is everything, and those of us who have spent our youths fishing will have mastered this essential skill. Sitting down is no good, as it narrows the field of view too much, as any hunter will appreciate. So, butterflying is more akin to game angling than to coarse fishing. One of my favourite standing places was in a young conifer plantation, where I would loiter for hours, gazing up at the adjoining oak edge in wait of Purple Emperors and their attendant knight, the Purple Hairstreak. But the conifers were growing and the vista was narrowing. Early in July I found a rusty milk churn in another wood, and laboured it on my shoulders to where it was needed. Nowadays, of course, such a venture would involve embarrassing interactions with several dog walkers. It was surprising on that day to encounter a lone woman walking a dog, a pioneer of the impending horde
s: ‘The Lord hath need of it,’ I announced, which left the lady speechless. She was not seen again in those woods. I stood on that milk churn for hours and hours, gazing up at the oak edge. No one ever saw me. It was an excellent vantage point. The churn stands there still, a forgotten monument to times gone by, but woods are strewn with the features of personal memories. They collect them.

  The first Purple Emperor appeared out of an altostratus sky on July 5th, in the Straits Inclosure of Alice Holt Forest, at 12.23 precisely.

  Diary, July 5th 1975: A momentary spectre of a large black-looking insect appeared near the top of a 50-foot oak about 50 yards away ... This was my first Alice Holt iris. It was pecking at a spray for a split second before vanishing as mysteriously as it had appeared: Was it a vision or a waking dream?

  It was the first of a massive emergence, for this was, without doubt, the year of the Emperor. The following afternoon, with an anticyclone stationed over Scotland, the butterflies put on a breathtaking display in Southwater Forest. At least half a dozen males were viewed, from the milk churn, partaking of an entertaining evening flight. Around 7 pm, four went to roost in oak sprays close together, squabbling up to the last minute. They were still there early the following morning, tucked well in. This was my first encounter with their roosting behaviour.

  In the early hours of the 8th a thunderstorm slowly brewed from the south. It began at around 3 am with an hour or so of edifying sheet lightning. Then the rumbling began, quickly intensifying into storm force ten. Nature is at its most powerful during a thunderstorm. There was only one thing to do, join in, and Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks was album of the summer. One of the most powerful tracks on this most personal of albums is called ‘Shelter from the Storm’, and another is ‘Idiot Wind’. At approximately 4.20 am, though by then time had become an irrelevance, a gust of wind hurried up the ride, carrying my tent with it. As Thoreau put it, ‘As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.’ Seconds later the deluge began. But that did not matter, for the Purple Emperor puts on a notably fine performance after a thunderstorm, and did so that day. The following day's flight was even better, doubtless because more had emerged, including the first females. The Emperor's polite and distinguished courtship flight was then duly witnessed.