A scatter of freshly emerged Painted Ladies, home-grown individuals, appeared whenever the autumn produced a pleasant day. It could have won my Butterfly of the Year award, but merely came a good second. For, on a ridiculously mild day in mid-December a Brimstone was seen wandering around the Top Pit at Noar Hill. He may have been lured out of hibernation in a bramble patch by the warmth of a bonfire lit by Hampshire Conservation Volunteers nearby, but he became fully active, before settling down to hibernate in a tussock of Tufted Hair-grass. Brimstones were seen elsewhere that day. So, for lessons rendered in the odious conifer plantations of Cheriton Wood, and at Hilliers Arboretum, the Brimstone won Butterfly of the Year – though in all honesty the standard was decidedly low. We were due a good summer, and a decent butterfly season.
16 Paradise regained: the great summer of 1989
Once in a lifetime a year actually gets it right. That year was 1989. It was an even better summer than that of 1976, offering more hot sunny days and fewer poor days. However, butterfly populations were by and large not a patch on those of 1976, for 1989 came in after a run of dismal summers during which butterfly populations had dwindled, whereas butterflies entered 1976 on a population high after two good summers. There was a fly in the ointment, too, for an underrated Australian side humiliated England in the summer's Ashes series.
The winter was ridiculously mild, and remarkably dry – as if the rain had exhausted itself during 1988. In Hampshire, Hawthorn leaves unfurled before Christmas on the early roadside tree near Jane Austen's house at Chawton, and Song Thrushes were piping away before New Year. The New Year itself was seen in by the Edward Thomas Memorial Stone on Shoulder of Mutton Hill above Steep, looking down on a spectacular firework display issuing from the vicinity of Bedales School. At the start of the year, then, the mood was celebratory.
January was so mild that Rooks were building their nests at Calne, in north Wiltshire, on the 22nd. Oddly, I did not see the first butterfly before February 21st, when a few Small Tortoiseshells came out to play. That tore it of course, a record deep depression, of 952 millibars, promptly deposited cold rain, and some snow, in a gale that lasted three days.
A major winter job was to search for Brown Hairstreak eggs in the Botley Wood area, north of Fareham in south Hampshire, which was threatened by major industrial development. The butterfly had been numerous there well into the 1970s, but had not been recorded since 1979. I drew a blank and concluded that the butterfly had died out due to a combination of factors. Within Botley Wood itself, the young plantations in which it had bred were maturing fast, and had choked out the young Blackthorn growth favoured by the butterfly. So the butterfly had become dependent on Blackthorn stands outside the forest fence, on farmland. There, before selling out to the developers, farmers had been busy grubbing out wood-edge Blackthorn stands and flail-cutting the thorn hedges mercilessly, whilst the few surviving Blackthorn stands were neglected and became too old and tall for this butterfly. It was a sad and sorry tale, of a butterfly caught between the hammer and anvil of intensification and neglect. There was hope, though: a walk through Hambledon Hanger, above the birthplace of cricket, revealed a huge and wonderfully healthy Wych Elm, complete with White-letter Hairstreak eggs. This leviathan of a tree had survived the ravages of Dutch elm disease.
March huffed and puffed, then dribbled and drabbled, before ending strongly. Easter arrived at the end of March. Early Easters always seem to bring dreadful weather, but 1989 had different ambitions, and the race was on for a March Orange-tip. Day after day I haunted the Gault Clay woods of the East Hampshire Hangers, where the butterfly's beloved Lady's Smock abounds, in an effort to beat the record for Hampshire's earliest ever Orange-tip – seen near Alton on March 31st 1920 by grammar school master and entomologist E A C Stowell. Eventually I had to admit defeat – only to see one on the outskirts of Pamber Forest, north of Basingstoke, on, you've guessed it, March 31st. So the record was merely equalled. Since 1989 butterfly seasons have advanced, and Orange-tips regularly appear in late March. In many ways, then, 1989 was a gateway year.
A cold and wet spell developed in mid-April, on a northerly airstream, to slow spring down. It was caterpillar-hunting weather, and the Pearl-bordered Fritillary obliged by providing some memorable hours in Parkhurst Forest on the Isle of Wight, just up from the prison. There, larvae were basking on dead oak leaves, warming up before crawling off at speed to feed briefly but frenetically on fresh violet leaves and flowers. Inspired, I looked again the following day in Alice Holt Forest, but found only a Large Skipper caterpillar feeding happily on Wood Sedge. The larvae of several of our so-called grass-feeding butterflies also eat sedges.
On May 2nd the wonderful summer of 1989 finally broke through. From then on it was glory all the way, beginning with the driest May for some 300 years, and the second sunniest (after 1909). London recorded 0.9 millimetres of rain all month. That day I was surveying insects at The Moors, a calcareous fen and carr system near Bishop's Waltham in south Hampshire. The rushy meadows were alive with Orange-tips, feeding joyously and laying eggs on Lady's Smock flowers. A week later they had been replaced by an even greater profusion of Green-veined Whites. There were strings of these gentle white butterflies bobbing about over the Lady's Smock stands, whilst numerous females were fluttering low to lay their eggs on the basal leaves. Orange-tip eggs are easy to find, below Lady's Smock flowers, but Green-veined White eggs are found on the underside of the basal rosette of leaves, right down at the base of the plant.
At the end of the first week of May, on the back of a strong anticyclone, the Pearl-bordered Fritillaries began to emerge. My first was ushered in by a Nightingale, hidden away in leafing trees. Once again they had timed their flight season with the flowering of their beloved Bugle. The Pearl-bordered was in goodly numbers that May, making the most of prolonged sunshine and the absence of any cold, wet or windy weather. New colonies were discovered in Harewood Forest, just west of Andover, and in a wood on the National Trust's estate at Mottisfont in west Hampshire. There, two dozen or so of these incessant wanderers of vernal woods were skimming about over a 1-hectare clearing in Drove Copse, on a calm sunny day when an azure sky was populated by tiny cotton-wool clouds. Parkhurst Forest was also revisited, and several strong colonies were found in young conifer plantations.
The Pearl-bordered Fritillary claimed a perfect May as its own, though many other species also fared well. On Noar Hill His Grace the Duke of Burgundy emerged in excellent numbers, for the weather and habitat conditions there were just about spot on for it. For once, its numbers were not depleted by a sudden deterioration in the weather. The first was seen on May 2nd, numbers peaked on the traditional National Duke of Burgundy Day of May 19th, and by the end of the month the butterfly was all but gone, having laid a great many eggs, and also having wandered off to establish new colonies. All that spells success for a butterfly. Remarkably, there were no butterfly losers during the spring of 1989.
Another great success story was the Glanville Fritillary on the Isle of Wight. A visit to Compton Chine, for daughter Lucy's birthday treat, found the butterfly abundant over the entire lower cliff slope system, and along the cliff top. They had even over-spilled onto the beach and into the National Trust car park. Ken Willmott, who had been monitoring that colony closely since 1973, was nonplussed. The diary ponders: I wonder when I'll see cinxia in such brilliant numbers again – if ever? I am still waiting. On a return visit on August 20th I found the larval webs so prolific that I wondered whether the larvae were going to eat themselves out of house and home. Sure enough, the following season the population crashed, though several other factors may have contributed – notably the impact of drought, parasites, and erosion caused by the storms of January 1990.
The early morning of Wednesday May 24th saw a belt of thundery showers move up from the south, with a day of humid azure haze following. In the wake of the thunderstorms I arrived on the Stroud commons, in the Cotswolds, to survey the National Trust holding
s of Minchinhampton and Rodborough commons. The lane surfaces were steaming after rain, with miniature rainbows shining through. It was a world of intense, other-worldly beauty, and a homecoming. It was Rodborough Common that really stole my heart. Little did I know that within three years I would be living nearby, having swapped it for Noar Hill. I found several Duke of Burgundy colonies, and numerous Brown Argus, Dingy Skippers, Green Hairstreaks and especially Small Blues on virtually all the slopes. Chalkhill Blue larvae were readily found hiding in the Horseshoe Vetch clumps. Iridescent green Cistus Forester moths danced everywhere, ethereal and fairy-like. I felt I had entered the state of mind so rapturously described in what must be Laurie Lee's greatest poem, ‘April Rise’, which captures the essence of spring in the Cotswolds.
Rain fell at the end of the first week of June, the first of any significance since April 24th (bar localised thunderstorms). A couple of frosts also occurred, which burnt off young Ash leaves and Bracken fronds. But then the fine weather built again, and butterfly populations with it. Large Skippers abounded on the grasslands. There was almost a plague of them at Keyhaven Marshes on the west Hampshire coast. Butterflies specialise in laying on localised population explosions, and this was one of them. On the downs, Meadow Brown, Marbled White and Ringlet all appeared unusually early, and in great numbers. Tuesday June 20th was stupefyingly hot – 30 degrees Celsius with an intense white light. I knew that light. I had last seen it during the high summer of 1976. There was only one place to be, an oak forest. Beneath the ancient oaks of Pamber Forest in north Hampshire I found my way back into that long hot summer. The first White Admiral and Silver-washed Fritillary males were emerging, and the weather was so hot and dry that some were drinking from the bed of the Bowmont Brook, which winds its way below tall oaks and Hazel coppice. The stream itself had retreated into a series of puddles. I sat down in the shade of an oak, and placed in my hat a Jay's feather found lying in the dust.
The Purple Emperor erupted into that summer in the most sudden and unexpected manner.
Diary, June 23rd 1989: At 1.26 I was standing on the summit of the high Bracken-dominated promontory of Woolbeding Common, outside Midhurst in West Sussex, gazing into the Wealden landscape, when I was attacked by a freshly emerged male iris. He flew round me, settled on a little birch, bowled me a bouncer which nearly took my sunhat off, then shot off eastwards – doubtless ending up in Dragons Green some 20 miles distant. He was hill-topping, having flown up the wooded scarp slope. One of the most memorable Emperors of my life, though he actually looked slate grey rather than purple. This I thought could well be the UK's earliest Purple Emperor since the incredible summer of 1893, and travelled home in appropriate mood. Ken Willmott then informed me that he had seen one at Bookham Common, Surrey, yesterday. K J Willmott has therefore been declared apostate.
After a couple of rather necessary rainy days June ended strongly, with an impressive hatch of Silver-washed Fritillaries in Harewood Forest, especially in the area known as Deadman's Plack, immortalised by W H Hudson in Hampshire Days. Over a hundred were seen, including a pristine female of the valezina colour form. Gatekeepers were emerging there, already, my first ever June Gatekeepers, along with the summer brood of the Green-veined White, again remarkably early. Above all, June had set July up superbly. It was time to leave a pregnant wife alone with a three-year-old child, and disappear off for three weeks in pursuit of the High Brown Fritillary in the West Country – I had a contract to survey High Browns there with the Nature Conservancy Council. To make the money run further and to get closer to Nature, I camped rather than bed and breakfasted, utilising some superb low-facility camp sites. For a briefing, I was handed the Biological Records Centre print-out of High Brown Fritillary records for Devon and Somerset, and was told to make contact with the key butterfly recorders there, and boldly go where no man had been before, boldly. I was the venturer into terra nova. This was a journey, if not into another world, then into another dimension of the one we think we know.
The journey started on the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths, an undulating expanse of ungrazed dry and humid heaths inland of the retirement haven of Budleigh Salterton. The first butterfly seen here was what proved to be the summer's only Clouded Yellow, which sped past on East Budleigh Common. Oddly, the great summer of 1989 proved to be a poor one for our migrant butterflies, as was the hot summer of 1984, with only the Red Admiral showing up in any numbers. I failed to find the High Brown Fritillary on those heaths, and suspect that the rotten summers of 1987 and 1988 had proved too much for the butterfly in what seemed to be marginally suitable habitat. The moister areas of the heaths were alive with Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries, a few Dark Green Fritillaries hurtled past, and I found some strong colonies of the Silver-studded Blue dotted about. I had not seen butterflies so numerous and diverse on a heath before; in comparison, populations on the heavily grazed New Forest heaths paled into insignificance.
Next up, the assault on Dartmoor – not the brooding high moor, Baskerville country, but the warm southern flanks and the valleys of the tumbling rivers Bovey, Dart and Teign. Despite the moor's reputation, south-east Dartmoor enjoys a distinctly rosy climate. First off was a visit to the lower moorland edge above Buckfastleigh, by way of a moment of quiet contemplation in Buckfast Abbey. One site on the To Visit list proved to be the infamous Site X, the last place to support the English race of the Large Blue and the first to receive the experimental introduction of the Swedish race, from the island of Öland. The locality was a closely guarded secret, so much so that I was blissfully unaware of where I was treading, net in hand. What mattered was that High Browns were known from the area, and I had a set of grid references to check out. At 12.30 on July 3rd I broke the Wildlife & Countryside Act rather spectacularly: I caught a Large Blue. It was a dwarf specimen which I mistook for a male Holly Blue. I casually swished a net at it, and discovered my mistake, though ignorance is no defence in law. It was actually the first Large Blue seen on Site Y, the rough heathy slope adjoining Site X. Then I bumped into Dave Simcox, the Large Blue Project Officer who was staying in an unholy caravan on Site X. He had seen two High Browns over the last few days. We saw none but were privileged to see four Large Blues, including a couple of females laying their eggs on the opening buds of Wild Thyme. Graylings abounded, breeding strongly there on tussocks of Bristle Bent Grass. But, as the day's final entry in the diary records: Four days in and I have yet to see a High Brown Fritillary on this trip. The weather, at least, was set fair.
The following day the High Brown Fritillary was at last encountered. First, half a dozen brassy males patrolling at pace above the stream that plunges from pool to pool in Trendlebere Combe, a steeply incised heathy combe dropping into the River Bovey a mile upstream of Bovey Tracey. The butterfly was breeding on violets under narrow ribbons of Bracken on the foot of the south-facing slope. Then a long arduous climb took me up along the steep west-facing slope of Lustleigh Cleave, with the River Bovey dancing away in the treed shadows below. Lustleigh is common land, but cattle were no longer depastured there and the slope was deteriorating into dense Bracken and invading oak woodland. Ten or so High Browns were seen swooping over the tall Bracken, including three in a vista, but it was obvious that the butterfly was doomed. Indeed, these were the last High Browns seen at Lustleigh Cleave.
One falls in love with the Teign valley instantly, most easily on a hot and cloudless day with an oven-blast wind issuing from the south-east. Two days were spent visiting often precipitous Bracken slopes along this valley and its many side combes. This was hard work, breast-stroking up pathless slopes of rank Bracken with bramble under foot. Every now and then a fritillary would speed past. My task was to identify and map it, without falling over. The sweat was profuse, the language at times coarse. At night, I was asleep by 9.30, scratched, bruised and satisfyingly exhausted. Happy campers returning from the pub failed to wake me up. The river sang sweet lullabies. Small colonies of High Brown Fritillaries were dotted about alon
g the valley. Some of these were known sites, like Dunsford Meadow; some were rediscoveries, as on Piddledown Common, next to the imposing Castle Drogo, and some were new discoveries. Downstream of Chagford there was a matrix of small colonies dotted all along the slopes of the Teign valley and its side combes. Sadly, the butterfly was never seen again in some of the sites I visited that year, often because nobody looked subsequently! A few years later the High Brown Fritillary collapsed in the Teign valley.
I was burning out, and needed time on less taxing terrain. Under a cloudless sky I drove over Dartmoor, past the prison, to the extensive Bracken-filled commons south and west of Tavistock. West Down, above the River Walkham near Grenofen, was a well-known site, where the High Brown Fritillary occurred in goodly numbers, and still does. A couple of new sites, on Roborough Common near Horrabridge, were discovered. There the habitat was in much better condition, grazed extensively by ponies and sheep, with the animals pushing into the Bracken stands to break down the dead fronds and encourage violets through. Then the weather broke down. Stygian gloom and thundery rain descended. By then I was out of it anyway, bent double by food poisoning contracted from an errant pub meal in my ancestral Cornwall. The rain saved David Gower's England from ignominious defeat in the second Test, and allowed me to recover.
In Pursuit of Butterflies Page 20