Meanwhile, in early June the spring butterflies started to burn themselves out. The Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were replaced by a massive emergence of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. In the East Hampshire woods, as in West Sussex, this proved to be an even more widespread butterfly than its congener. A large population was discovered in the Oakhanger woods, which produced two acute aberrations, one of which was probably ab. vanescens. Only a verbal description exists, in my diary, as I had no camera then and was not prepared to take them as specimens. Had I done so, and they were worthy of collecting, the summer would doubtless have died on me. In brief, the wing undersides did not look remotely like a Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, and the uppersides, scarcely.
Another long cycle ride, past Edward Thomas country, to the sheep-grazed slopes of Butser Hill and Ramsdean Down south of Petersfield, on a stultifying hot day in mid-June, is memorable for what may be the best flight of the humble Small Heath I have ever seen. In those days, long before it showed any sign of decline, it was such a commonplace insect that one took little notice of it. The general attitude was that it got in the way of better quarry. Little Butser Hill also held a sizeable colony of Duke of Burgundy, though this spring butterfly was by then finishing for the year.
The following day I returned to Southwater Forest, in search of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. But none was found. It too had apparently died out there. I had seen the last of the Southwater Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries the previous year. The Nightingales were still vocal, though, at night, and White-letter Hairstreaks were emerging, somehow, from dying elms. Farmers had been hard at work, grubbing out hedges and cutting back wood edges that had encroached decades ago. The heat built steadily.
June 19th was a Saturday, and the Saturday of the Lords Test match to boot. Not a ball was bowled. I know, for I was there. Snow and Underwood had dismissed the mighty West Indies for a mere 182. Snow was a man of Sussex and of Christ's Hospital school (a few years earlier I had slept in his bed, and by that I mean only that the bed I occupied in the senior school had formerly been his, for his name and dates were etched into the headboard). Contrary to the weather forecast, light but steady rain fell from midday, ceasing mid-morning on the 20th. By then, Clarke and I had travelled up to the Oxfordshire woods in search of the elusive Black Hairstreak. I had unfinished business with that butterfly, having looked for it in past years with at best only paltry success, being miles away at boarding school during much of its flight season. Returning to Rushbeds Wood north of Brill, the scene of a failed expedition in 1971, this most evasive of hairstreaks put on a stupendous performance. I have only once seen it in better numbers since, during its annus mirabilis of 2010. It is very much a boom or bust butterfly, experiencing many lean years punctuated by occasional years of plenty. In 1976 it was abundant along the east edge of Rushbeds Wood, which was then a neglected and thoroughly forgotten tract of broad-leaved woodland that had been clear-felled during the Second World War and then forsaken (some years later Rushbeds was acquired by the county wildlife trust, and became a managed wood). Pruni, as the Black Hairstreak is known, was still flying actively when Clarke and I left at 6.30. It had started its day late, at around 1.30, due to the unforecast rain, and had been making up for lost time.
From June 22nd the weather intensified, the famous Long Hot Summer had truly begun. Britain, or the UK, or whatever it was called at the time, had just capitulated bizarrely to Iceland in the third Cod War, indicating that something was out of kilter. Clouds became almost as rare as Large Blues. In the Hampshire woods Meadow Browns had emerged in myriads and were jostling for position on every bramble flower. They had started to emerge in the meadows and along the road verges as early as June 2nd and were now threatening to reach plague proportions. But minds were on mightier, loftier matters: would it be possible to equal or even beat Heslop's record for the earliest Purple Emperor, on Midsummer Day? I failed, though not for want of sweat and effort. Later I found out that iris commenced that year in Alice Holt Forest on the 25th. Had I visited Southwater Forest, where flight seasons are a little earlier, I might have beaten that Midsummer Day record, but it mattered little.
Over the last weekend of June, Clarke and Oates staged an expedition to the Lake District. The journey north on the Friday afternoon was memorable, in that there seemed to be an overheated car every three or four miles up the M6, bonnet up, radiator steaming. The summer of 1976 was nothing if not exacting. We slept in Clarke's car, along a quiet lane near Witherslack, and were unkindly woken at 5.30 the following morning by a passing farmer: ‘Good morning, you queer bastards!’ he shouted from the safe haven of a tractor cab. Little did he know that the occupants had lulled themselves to sleep by discussing girls. Undeterred and unbreakfasted, we found Large Heath males well out on Meathop Moss, once we had stumbled upon a way into this most hidden of places, a world within a world. The Large Heath is the grey pilgrim of the peat hags, drifting about aimlessly in the breeze. Oddly, the last Pearl-bordered Fritillary of the season was seen flying over the wet heath vegetation there, a stray from the surrounding limestone hills. In those days the moss was still genuinely wet, such that even at the height of the 1976 drought Wellington boots were essential, and were regularly overtopped. Not too much had changed, then, since an Edwardian collector writing in The Entomologist's Record advised: ‘Great care is necessary in moving about, as one's leg frequently disappears well above the knee, either into a large hidden crack or into a bog hole, in either case a highly dangerous occurrence if on the run.’ Similar recommendations were made by an earlier entomological visitor, who for many years ran the ‘lunatic asylum’ at Lancaster, and escaped from there to entomologise around Arnside and Witherslack. After 1976 I witnessed the moss, a wonderful domed raised bog, dry out such that first Wellingtons became unnecessary, and then, prickles apart, even walking boots as the water table was lowered by drainage ditches cut along its boundaries to facilitate agriculture in the surrounding fields. Massive conservation effort by the Cumbria Wildlife Trust is now remedying that situation.
The mountains were calling, and even revealed a cloud or two, one like a ring of dragon smoke around the summit of Blencathra. On Fleetwith Pike, above the Honister Pass youth hostel, the Mountain Ringlets were just starting to emerge, revealing an iridescence on their wings like that of a Starling in breeding plumage. Herdwick sheep panted and bleated pitifully in the heat. Arnside Knott was also visited, but it seemed that the High Brown Fritillary season there had not yet begun and we failed to locate another target species, the Northern Brown Argus. All we saw was yet another proliferation of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary before duty called us back south. Clarke had to return to his teaching job, for it was the exam season, and I to the Emperor.
But something was wrong with the strength of the sun, it had become if anything too strong. During a fifteen-day period, from June 23rd to July 7th inclusive, the temperature reached 32 degrees Celsius somewhere in southern Britain. Clouds were all but absent, restricted to wisps of high cirrus, often in curious shapes. Roads melted such that the tarmac became and then remained viscous. Cycling through, rather than over it, was arduous in the extreme, with the tyres making a curious dragging, sticking sound. Almost daily I cycled to Alice Holt Forest, through nine miles of melting tarmac. My nose burnt, peeled, burnt again, peeled, before giving up in abject resignation. One by one the East Hampshire heaths caught fire, seemingly by design rather than by genuine accident, for the disaffected youth of places like the military town of Bordon had problems sleeping on those warm nights. Palls of smoke rose high, before bending and drifting in some high-altitude wind. There was a searing inevitability about it all.
The Purple Emperor at last exploded onto the scene, adding iridescent purple to a world of azure and gold. It was a short but extremely sweet season. I saw my first, a brace of battling males, in Alice Holt's Straits Inclosure, early on June 28th, saw two more, and met someone out rough shooting who had earlier watched one settle and dis
play on a rickety old wooden gate that stood at the wood's western entrance. I knew the spot – it caught dappled morning sun, framed between tall oaks. I coveted that sighting. I discovered a thriving colony in Hartley Wood, by Oakhanger: large, bold and aggressive males that threatened to rival their Dragons Green counterparts in belligerence.
On July 1st there was a mass emergence of females. I must have seen at least ten that day, whereas in previous seasons I had never seen more than three in a day. That morning, a huge ancient silver Bentley drew up at the entrance to one of the Alice Holt inclosures, and a gnome-like man emerged, clad in a string vest, Boy Scout shorts of considerable antiquity and hobnail boots – and proceeded to rub rancid Danish Blue cheese into a Forestry Commission gatepost. This was the Baron de Worms, close friend of my boyhood hero I R P Heslop and the most respected lepidopterist of the era. He swore by rancid Danish Blue as a bait for iris, but had retreated to a local hostelry by the time the first male descended. The bait was duly consumed by wasps. That morning I made a fool of myself, though mercifully there were no witnesses. A huge dark butterfly flew at 3–4 metres above ground along a heavily shaded ride. Immediately I gave chase, convinced this was a rare dark colour form of the Empress, ab. iole perchance. Whooping with delight I eventually cornered my first ever Silver-washed Fritillary form valezina, the strange dark-green colour form of this normally orange species that is found only in the female and seems to prefer heavily shaded rides, at least in heatwaves. Black Admirals were around too: I saw on average one a day in Alice Holt that season.
Two days were then spent in Southwater Forest, but the woods felt oppressive in the sweltering heat. Worse, I did not belong there anymore, for the poetic spell was broken. The signs were ominous: I found a dying Emperor, hit by a car along one of the quiet lanes, whilst a scatter of White-letter Hairstreaks fluttered round the last of the dying elms, in the knowledge that there were no living elms left for them to seek and in recognition of their doom. Huge hexagonal cracks were everywhere in the Wealden Clay. Here dwelt the ghosts of last year. The present year lay elsewhere. The sense of belonging was broken. I left after two difficult days and two sleepless nights. It was many years before I was able to return to those woods; or perhaps, until they invited me back.
Back in Alice Holt early on July 6th, the Emperors put on a truly majestic show. I had moved home, or home had moved itself. I even saw four females in a vista, which remains the most I have ever seen of Herself at once, and at last saw eggs laid in a place I could actually reach. The latter represented a major breakthrough. The butterfly was at peak season. Each morning, both sexes would descend to the grassy rides to seek whatever vestige of moisture they could find, with the bulk of this activity taking place between 8.30 and 9.30. On occasions there were three or four down at a time along my favoured 75-metre stretch of ride. The White Admiral behaved similarly. But by mid-July much of the White Admiral's Honeysuckle had wilted.
By July 8th I had been butterflying all day, every day, in intense heat, for over three weeks, and pursuing young ladies or playing cricket (or both) in the evenings – and so I failed to wake up that morning. A shame I did not manage to last another day because on the 9th the weather broke, sort of: it actually rained, a little, then stayed dull and only reached a maximum of 17 degrees. At Old Trafford, Michael Holding bowled England out for 71.
On July 10th I was back in Alice Holt, reinvigorated. There was no mistaking the valezina Silver-washed Fritillary that greeted me at the main gate at 8.30, not this time. Then at 9.40 I saw the real thing, an Empress ab. lugenda, a black Empress. Three of us watched her for twenty minutes. She even laid eggs in front of our eyes. The prominent white bands that normally run through the middle of the wings were absent, the hindwings being uniformly dark; on the forewing uppersides there were a few small white markings; the undersides lacked any white, being predominately grey and brown. At the time I considered this a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I was wrong: years later I photographed a similar female in Fermyn Woods, Northamptonshire.
The following day I and two others, Peter and Joan Baines of Farnham, witnessed the courtship flight of the Purple Emperor. Now this was ground-breaking stuff, for many of our butterflies are rarely seen courting and mating, especially those which dwell up in the canopy. At 2.45 a male was seen closely following a female, as if they were playing follow-my-leader, the male mimicking the female's every move – White Admirals do this when courting, weaving in and out of foliage in synchronised motion. The Emperors settled high up on an oak and immediately joined, wings closed and motionless, tucked into a leaf spray. They remained in copula, as scientists put it, for three and a half hours, before separating and flying off into the concluding pages of a D H Lawrence novel, or wherever over-amorous butterflies go. Incidentally, it cannot have been the lady's first mating, for she was clearly worn.
Thereafter the Emperor season rapidly burnt out, though it was evident that they had deposited a large number of eggs and set themselves up well for 1977. The Alice Holt females had taught me how to look for their eggs and larvae. By July 18th the Emperor was all but over, but not before I had seen the aberrant female again, on the 14th, in the same glade. She still flies within my mind. Graylings and Silver-studded Blues were appearing in strange places, displaced from their beloved heaths by wanton fires. As the brambles and thistles finished flowering in the woods, so Silver-washed Fritillaries dispersed in search of pastures new. A roadside flowerbed of African Marigolds attracted quite a host of them, until that too succumbed to the drought. Purple Hairstreaks were regularly encountered probing for moisture on the parched ground. In the evenings they were almost too profuse to describe – an order of magnitude greater than I have experienced at any other time, and their evening flight lasted till 9 pm. At times they moved around in droves along wood edges. Their eggs later proved to be abundant: I found 225 along a 75-metre stretch of drooping oak boughs in Hartley Wood, but only twelve there the following year.
In Bernwood Forest and in the Chiddingfold Woods the Wood White produced a sizeable second brood. A spur-of-the-moment translocation was made, of six females and two males, to the Straits Inclosure of Alice Holt, as a thank you for producing such a great Purple Emperor, White Admiral and Silver-washed Fritillary season. Butterfly enthusiasts did things like that in that era. Later I found out that the butterfly had spread naturally to Alice Holt that year anyway. It took there quite well, only blowing out in 1981 when its favoured rides were pulverised when timber was extracted during wet weather.
A day of torrential thunderstorms on the 20th failed to relieve the drought. About an inch of rain ran straight through the parched ground, even on clay soils. Then another anticyclone established itself over Britain, heralding a major August drought. In the Straits Inclosure, on the Gault Clay, a huge crack had opened in the main ride, some 6 metres long and at least 2 metres deep and perhaps 30 centimetres wide. Slowly, during the late summer and early autumn, that crack gradually vanished. It has never reappeared. By now, the nation's lawnmowers had gathered cobwebs and dust in garden sheds, all lawns having been brown for weeks. In early August a stupendous gaff letter, on official paper, was issued to a number of Southern Water's customers in north-east Hampshire. It complained that they had been squandering water profligately, advised that in addition to placing the by-now obligatory brick in the loo cistern they should place another in the loo itself, and told them to bath with a friend or next door's teenage daughter. It was signed ‘R Sole’. Apparently some of Southern Water's customers took it seriously. Doubtless someone got the sack. The heat was getting to the nation.
August dragged on in sullen heat. The downs turned a pale shade of grey as the vegetation wilted, south-facing slopes even turning brown. On the thinnest soils, much vegetation frazzled away. Elsewhere, farmers took advantage of the dry conditions to drain wetland pockets and meadows for more productive agriculture. Noar Hill revealed a good population of Brown Hairstreaks, active early in the morning bef
ore entering a heat-induced stupor for the rest of the day. It was hard not to join them. Graylings and Silver-studded Blues appeared there off the blackened heaths, and Chalkhill Blues and Brown Argus from the distant downs. Wall Brown produced an even more prolific brood than it had managed in early summer, occurring along almost every sunny bank in the district. But the most interesting feature of the month was the frequency of dwarf specimens, of many species, presumably induced by larvae cutting short their feeding time and pupating prematurely as their foodplants wilted. In particular, numerous Common Blues and Chalkhill Blues were significantly undersized that August.
One late summer day, I discovered that a new track had been bulldozed along the northern edge of Noar Hill, through Blackthorn entanglements beloved by Nightingales, Turtle Doves and Brown Hairstreaks. Ancient pollard Beech trees were being felled willy-nilly and for no obvious reason in the adjoining hanger. The contractors told me they were dangerous trees and had to come out. I was not fooled. Trees are seldom if ever dangerous. My protestations culminated in me becoming a warden for the reserve, which at that time lacked any practical input. A conservationist had rather suddenly been born. It was pay-back time.
At the end of August two cataclysmic things happened, almost simultaneously. The government appointed an official Minister for Drought, and the Hindu community brought over a Holy Man to pray for rain. Within three days of the Minister's appointment and even less after the Holy Man's arrival, the weather broke, spectacularly; so spectacularly that an excessively wet autumn ensued, and Britain did not experience any sustained hot or dry weather again until the spring of 1980. Once more I retreated to the apple harvest on Blackmoor Estate, where Red Admirals feasted on fallen fruit between the deluges. In early October they drifted away south, seeking warmer climes. Weekends were spent searching for Purple Emperor larvae in and around woods in East Hampshire and into West Sussex. I had cracked how to find them, and located over a hundred. One weekend in late September, when the sun actually shone, I returned to Southwater Forest, only to find that many sallow trees there had succumbed to the drought.
In Pursuit of Butterflies Page 9