We wandered westwards, past tussocks of Meadow Clary, drifts of Pale Flax and patches of exotic Viper's Bugloss and, best of all, some clumps of Yellow Vetchling. Our aim was to find the Long-winged Conehead, a cricket which at the time was confined to a mere nine populations along the coast of central southern England. After hard endeavour we found it at Chapman's Pool. We need not have bothered, though, for within five years it had erupted out of its coastal strongholds to colonise spectacularly much of central southern England, including our garden at The Lodge, in the hamlet of Binsted Wyck near Alton. Butterflies have such powers too, though they need triggering, kick-starting.
But 1980 was a damaged summer, punctured by a rotten June, and butterfly populations were further harmed by other, shorter pulses of poor weather. The Painted Lady and Red Admiral immigrations of early June resulted only in a scatter of home-grown specimens in late August and September. They were certainly around and about, in twos and threes here and there, but a great many more home-bred specimens would have graced the turn of summer had June been less inclement. A few Clouded Yellows appeared inland, though again as only a shadow of what might have been, for a fair few had arrived in early June.
1981 was designated Butterfly Awareness Year by a consortium of entomological societies, the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy Council. The Large Blue had recently been declared extinct in Britain, and it was feared that the Heath Fritillary would follow. Interestingly, the Large Tortoiseshell had managed to sink into oblivion without anybody actually noticing, presumably because it was suspected of being partially migratory. But it was time for action, so Butterfly Awareness Year was announced, though the diary mused, This is tempting providence, it's bound to rain all summer.
It did rain all summer, or for most of it. March set the scene, being the second wettest on record. April started mild, producing early Orange-tips and Speckled Woods, but then fell apart: heavy snow fell over much of the country of the 24th and 25th, in an unseasonal blizzard, and then persisted on the ground into May. Many trees in leaf were caught out by the blizzard. May failed to redeem things, being the dullest since 1932, and one of the coolest. The only golden moment was on the evening of the 10th when, after countless hours of searching over several years, I found my first Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary larva, feeding on Early Dog-violet leaves along the ride edge in Hartley Wood, Oakhanger, which at the time supported a genuinely large population of this local butterfly. Some British butterfly caterpillars are relatively easy to find in the wild, but many are not – and none more so than the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. The triumphant diary entry concludes, I don't intend looking for them again.
Another triumph of 1981 was finally seeing Commas mating. Like the Peacock, Red Admiral and Small Tortoiseshell, this familiar butterfly is seldom seen in flagrante delicto, though courting pairs and duos of battling males are regularly observed (and the latter readily confused with the former). The action occurred in our garden at The Lodge, Binsted Wyck, at the end of July. The Lodge was the most loveable if dilapidated of houses, the gatehouse to a crumbling Victorian edifice owned by one of the most remarkable, and eccentric, personalities of the twentieth century, Lady Charlotte Bonham-Carter. She was by birth a Wykeham, and Binsted Wyck was the family seat. Charlotte was a serious patron of the arts and of nature, and was my sponsor. We lived at The Lodge for ten glorious years. The garden was cared for with butterflies and birds firmly in mind, alongside flowers, fruit and vegetables. Although in a hilltop position, it was well sheltered, being surrounded on two sides by an outgrown Beech hedge and on the others by entanglements of Laurel, Privet and other shrubs. Each high summer Comma butterflies would gather in the west-facing corner, especially in late afternoon and early evening. This was clearly an established assembly point for a butterfly that must have a highly sophisticated mate-location strategy, as it occurs at low population density. The diary recalls that in the late afternoon of July 29th two pairs of Comma were courting in the garden, the males pursuing the females around in a frenetic spiralling flight before losing them. Occasionally, a female would settle on shrub foliage, where the attendant male would seek to join her, body to body, only for the minx to change her mind at the last moment and fly off. Eventually, at 4 pm, a female led a male high into an Elder bush, where she settled receptively. They joined, in cop, instantly, before crawling out of view into the bush. Mating must have lasted only a little over an hour, as the successful male, with distinctively torn hindwings, was back in the courtship territory at 5.20, wanting more. Gentlemen, please …
Also that year, I was taken to a wood midway along Hampshire's northern boundary which held the vestiges of a colony of the rapidly declining High Brown Fritillary. These were hurtling about at speed within an ailing conifer plantation that had been adversely affected by the 1976 drought, and intermingling with a much larger population of equally frenetic Dark Green Fritillaries. I only positively identified one, a large female resplendent on a Marsh Thistle head, but felt at the time that that species was calling me. I had received The Call before, of course, by no less a being than the Purple Emperor, but he seemed to be dispensing with my services. This sighting near Kingsclere, and further sightings that summer on Arnside Knott in south Cumbria, constituted the beginning of a long personal journey, into the realm of that most wondrously named of our butterflies, the High Brown Fritillary.
But 1981 is most memorable for the Wildlife & Countryside Act (1981). The Thatcher government had inherited it as a bill from its predecessor, which it watered down heavily – but it did nonetheless produce it as an Act. Although diehard nature conservationists such as young Oates ardently believed at the time that the Act did not go anything like far enough, hindsight has to label it a success – simply because it was backed by an effective government agency, the Nature Conservancy Council. NCC, as it was known, actually had teeth, as well as strongly motivated and highly competent staff who were not bogged down by bureaucratic targets and reporting systems. We owe that generation of NCC staff a considerable amount. Of course, government soon realised that NCC was unhelpfully effective, and systematically neutered it.
One of the less widely recognised aspects of the Wildlife & Countryside Act was its impact on butterfly collecting, which it effectively drove underground. A small number of butterfly species were afforded full legal protection, and became untouchable, but many more were listed under preposterously bureaucratic trading restrictions. The ‘trade-only’ restriction, as it became known, annoyed everyone involved in butterflying: it angered the conservationists, who wanted to ban all collecting and the breeding for release into the wild of most species, and completely disaffected butterfly breeders, dealers and collectors. This schism has not been bridged, and the butterflying fraternity remains horribly divided, with a shadowy subculture. Furthermore, as most quality butterfly collecting grounds became Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) under the Act, collecting became a decidedly risky business.
The spring of 1982 saw Britain at war, against unforeseen adversaries. Prior to April 2nd that year hostilities between us and Argentina had been limited, sensibly, to the football and rugby fields. Then, completely out of the blue, Argentina invaded a forgotten remnant of Empire called the Falkland Islands. This drama occurred as spring was getting going at the end of a challenging winter which had brought two spells of sub-zero temperatures and a snowy December.
Naturalists need strategies for surviving the British winter. I had surveyed the distribution of Brown Hairstreak in the Selborne area and had found that the butterfly liked young, dynamically growing Blackthorn stems that were grey in colour, and scarcely used the older, shiny red-stemmed variety. I had also determined that nearly all the eggs laid in hedges were pulverised by hedge trimming, making study singularly depressing.
The solution was to follow the larvae of the Wall Brown through the winter in the wild, on Noar Hill. Now, these are fun, yes fun. Following them is utterly fascinating. In that era Wal
l Browns were considered rather commonplace, though their adult populations were prone to great fluctuations, according to the vicissitudes of summer weather. Consequently, no one had really thought about studying them, there were higher priorities. During the mid-1980s, though, Wall Browns began to decline. We are still far from sure why. At Noar Hill, in August, the females tended to lay their eggs on grass roots protruding through the roofs of Rabbit holes or the overhangs of tractor ruts along the tracks bordering the reserve. The eggs look like tiny pearls, though they are greenish when first laid. I used to find little Aladdin's caves, containing as many as half a dozen eggs, as August merged into September. Following larval development seemed a natural thing to do, though larvae resulting from eggs laid in late summer have to make it through the winter. Fortunately, they do not wander far, living sedate lives close to where they had started off as eggs. I discovered that these tiny larvae, grass-green in colour, have the habit of basking in the sun on mild winter days when the vegetation is dry. That in itself is remarkable, as most butterfly books state that they are nocturnal. I also found that they begin feeding on very fine, soft grasses, such as Red Fescue and Yorkshire-fog, but graduate on to broader-leaved and coarser grasses, such as False Oat-grass and Upright Brome grass, as they grow bigger. Then, they will even feed on coarse-leaved sedges, notably Glaucous Sedge, a common downland sedge. My main discovery was that when fully grown the larvae return to the Rabbit-hole ceilings and tractor-rut overhangs to pupate – some pupated within a few centimetres of where they had started out as eggs, on the same substrates! There I found that there are two colour forms of the pupae, green and black.
Early in 1982, I found Wall Brown larvae out basking as early as January 23rd, only a week after a lengthy sub-zero spell. On the last day of the month, when it was almost warm enough for butterflies to fly, a good dozen were found, basking and even feeding a little. So much for larvae that are reputed to be nocturnal! In late March they changed skins for the last time, then fed slowly but steadily before beginning to pupate in mid-April, during a prolonged spell of fine weather. The first adult butterfly appeared there on May 10th.
Lest you think that following these larvae during the winter and early spring was easy, think again. It regularly took half an hour to find one, even in a known spot, for the larvae are wondrously cryptic, matching the grass blades perfectly. Also, I was forever finding Marbled White and Meadow Brown larvae, which closely resemble Wall Brown larvae in colour, though in spring the Wall Browns grew faster than their cousins and quickly became distinct. So, that is where my mind was when Britain went to war.
But, distant war apart, the spring of 1982 was fine, and spring butterflies thrived. The Duke of Burgundy put on a fine show at Noar Hill. I followed egg-laying females and staked out 317 eggs, with the intention of studying the larvae. Incredibly, 85 of those eggs (27%) were devoured by snails, mainly by the Kentish Snail (Monacha cantiana), which was feeding heavily on Coswlip leaves that year. Help was readily to hand in the nearby Gilbert White & Oates Museum (named after two explorers, Oates of the Antarctic and another Oates who got eaten by cannibals) – for the museum's curator, June Chatfield, had conducted her PhD research on that very species of snail. I stormed into the museum with Lettres of Fyre & Sworde:
‘Your snail has been eating my butterfly eggs!’ I exploded.
‘I'm sure it didn't mean to,’ June gently replied.
She was right. This snail is exclusively a herbivore and had been consuming eggs by accident, whilst grazing on Cowslip leaves. Its population was unusually high on Noar Hill in 1982, having increased during a sequence of wet summers. In the following two summers snail predation rates declined to 18% and 15% respectively, before subsiding to an insignificant 7% in 1985, as snail populations declined following a run of three hot dry summers – great for butterflies, but bad for molluscs: swings and roundabouts.
The Marsh Fritillary was on the move, forming new colonies in west and north Hampshire, and indeed in many other counties. Marsh Fritillaries are renowned for having occasional periods of expansion, and 1982 was the start of a major expansion phase for it. Please do not think that the status and distribution of our butterflies is remotely stable; they are forever expanding and contracting, and above all seeking to push limits – weather permitting.
That year brought a genuinely good summer, the first since 1976, and one that ended a long sequence of summers that were disappointing or worse. Butterflies, being tremendous opportunists, largely bounced back. But I was hefted to Noar Hill and Alice Holt Forest that year, seldom venturing further afield and visiting only a few new places. Money was in short supply, which meant that journeys of discovery had to be rationed.
Also, in 1982 much time was devoted to establishing the Hampshire Branch of what is now Butterfly Conservation, but was then the sleepy British Butterfly Conservation Society. I had joined as a life member in 1977, for a paltry £15 which was indicative of the society's lack of ambition. Along with several like-minded folk I was determined to help transform, even revolutionise the society. The Hampshire Branch, which was founded late in 1981, came together largely on account of the energies and abilities of Pat Torrie, whom I had first met in Alice Holt back in 1976, and Christopher Holt, an old Etonian who had recently retired from being the Queen's banker and stockbroker. A gangly man with a mischievous sense of humour and the ability to communicate with anyone, Christopher had a remarkable knack of making money. To his considerable embarrassment he was forever winning the raffle at Branch events. He magnetically attracted money, and was remarkably well connected. Many a useful deal was done for butterflies whilst he was out shooting pheasants on various Hampshire estates. He had, of course, collected butterflies as a boy, but now regarded butterfly photography as a country sport every bit as challenging and enthralling as pheasant and partridge shooting, salmon fishing and even deer stalking, all of which he practised. My role was to set up field and indoor meetings, produce a newsletter, and attract new members. A great many were recruited on Noar Hill. Holt and Torrie conducted the real business: they pulled strings.
Prior to the metamorphosis of the British Butterfly Conservation Society into Butterfly Conservation, butterfly enthusiasts were essentially loners, socialising at best in pairs or as loose associations. It was the development of the county and regional branches that revolutionised the society, and the world of butterflying with it. Without Butterfly Conservation, butterfly enthusiasts would still be isolated loners, and their cause alienated from wider society. More than anything, Butterfly Conservation has made butterflies socially acceptable.
Noar Hill
Noar Hill, to the south of Selborne, may well be Britain's best-loved butterfly site, rivalled only by Arnside Knott in South Cumbria and Bentley Wood, on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border. It has long been a place of pilgrimage for admirers of butterflies and orchids. Butterflies have been studied there since 1975, and closely monitored since 1983, when a butterfly monitoring transect walk was established. Incredibly, only two people have ever walked that transect route, having become hefted to the place, part of it.
Noar Hill lies within a landscape of arable farming and hanging woodland, and adjoins an ancient woodland hanger (from the old English word hangra, meaning steeply sloping woodland). It has been a Hampshire Wildlife Trust reserve since the late 1960s, under a leasehold agreement from Rotherfield Estate. The reserve was scheduled as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 1951, early on in the designation process. It is listed as a Grade 2 SSSI in Derek Ratcliffe's seminal review of important nature conservation sites in Britain (1977), failing to achieve Grade 1 status simply on account of its small size (about 10 hectares). More recently it has become included within a large, mostly wooded, Special Area for Conservation (SAC), which means it is part of an area of European importance for nature.
Essentially, Noar Hill is an intimate mosaic of short-, medium- and long-turf chalk grassland, scrub of various sorts, and developing woodland over a
ncient chalk pits. These pits are considered to be of medieval origin, though it is decidedly unclear what the material was used for, as extraction pre-dates the use of lime in agriculture. Soil depth varies, with skeletal soils on the pit floors supporting short-turf plant communities and deeper soils longer turf.
Little is known of Noar Hill's wildlife or management history prior to the 1950s. Gilbert White scarcely mentions the place, as it is situated just outside his parish. It was known by lepidopterists by the time of the First World War, though it lay in the shadow of a better-known butterfly locality at Selborne Common, where Brown Hairstreak and Duke of Burgundy occurred in good numbers. It appears that the butterfly interest gradually transferred from Selborne Common to Noar Hill during the second half of the twentieth century. The hill was grazed by cattle until about 1950, then lost the Rabbit population and became dominated by coarse grasses – primarily False Oat-grass.
In Pursuit of Butterflies Page 13