We found Mountain Ringlet colonies scattered seemingly at random over the vast expanses of Mat-grass grassland that characterise the less boggy or stony ground of the high fells. It seemed to occur in highly localised colonies separated by large areas of unoccupied terrain that appeared to be suitable. Now that's not logical, butterflies are not randomly distributed. The few eggs we saw being laid were placed in dry warm spots where there was an underlay of Sheep's Fescue grass amongst myriad tussocks of Mat-grass. Hypothesis: Does this butterfly require a mixed grass sward, do the larvae start feeding on the finer Sheep's Fescue before moving on to tough old Mat-grass? Butterflies are forever inspiring hypotheses, but are loath to reveal answers.
Two days later, twitching with anticipation, I was on the Bracken slopes of the Mendip escarpment at Cross Plain, south of Winscombe. There, notably above Kingswood, was some of the best-looking High Brown Fritillary habitat I had seen in years. I was going to rediscover Britain's fastest-declining butterfly in the Mendips, in my native Somerset! The butterfly was out in numbers in the West Country, my timing was perfect. Sure enough, as I came out from the trees innumerable large golden fritillaries were skimming fast over the Bracken, and visiting thistle flowers. There were hundreds of them. One by one they revealed themselves to be freshly emerged Dark Green Fritillaries. In disbelief I returned two weeks later, with the same devastating result. Even a pristine Clouded Yellow failed to lift the depression. Worse, in the intervening period I saw what proved to be the last of the New Forest High Browns, and was worried by what little I saw of the butterfly in the Teign valley, near Castle Drogo on Dartmoor. Suffice to say that the highs and lows of butterflying are considerable, as is the vulnerability of butterflies.
But the High Brown Fritillary would not be put down. A long weekend was spent surveying the cluster of colonies in the enchanting Heddon valley on the Exmoor coast, the only known West Country locality for this butterfly not covered by my surveys of 1989 and 1990. The High Brown Fritillary is one of our least child-friendly butterflies, being largely a denizen of steep slopes thickly afforested with dense brambly Bracken, but the family came too, and played on the beach at Woolacombe when not delighting along Heddon's rushing, gushing stream. The High Brown population here was clearly large, one of the strongest in the country. Three tiny colonies were found on the National Trust's Watersmeet estate, upstream of Lynton and Lynmouth, though these were in a parlous state and destined not to persist. Heddon was the place to concentrate conservation effort. We did, and it worked.
The Purple Emperor shone brilliantly from late June through to late July. Impressive flights were seen in Alice Holt Forest and in the woods to the south-west, near Oakhanger. In the Oakhanger woods I also saw my first ‘Black Admiral’ since 1983. These dark White Admirals are very intermittent and localised in appearance. Then, on July 27th, a male Emperor was seen flying over the downland summit of Beeding Hill on the West Sussex downs. What on earth was this forest insect doing flying over open downland on the crest of the South Downs, some way from any wood? Where had he come from – over barren cereal fields above Shoreham? And where was he heading? I knew the answer to that – Dragons Green, and it meant I was being called.
The Clouded Yellows had come in, and in a big way. More than 50 were seen over fields on the South Devon coast between Brixham and Kingswear, favouring south-facing slopes seeded with Rye Grass and White Clover, and grazed by cattle or sheep. The females were laying eggs on this agricultural White Clover, mainly on tiny isolated plants growing where the grasses were turning brown under advancing drought – in the hottest possible places. The same slopes were alive with Common Blues, also breeding on White Clover. Previously I had rather ignored these agricultural grasslands, but here in the South Hams they were clearly a useful butterfly habitat. Even more Clouded Yellows were seen on the Isle of Wight downs during early August. There, a constant stream of swift-flying males patrolled the lower south-facing slopes of the downs, squabbling terribly when two met.
But July belonged to the Peacock. The new brood began to appear in mid-July, and then fed up rapidly during a minor heatwave, such that most had entered hibernation by the end of the first week of August. They were wise, for the bulk of August was exceptionally poor – cool, sunless and wet, with just the odd reasonable day. The wonderful butterfly summer of 1992 was effectively cut off in its prime. In fairness, though, we were due a poor August.
The 1992 butterfly season had one last trick up its sleeve, before it was ended by an excessively wet November. On September 20th, during what the diary describes as a family blackberrying and beach cricket expedition to Middle Hope, just north of Weston-super-Mare on the Bristol Channel coast, a Monarch butterfly floated around us in Woodspring Priory car park, before batting off in a huff. And it was the size of a bat too, though faded and battered. The children were unimpressed, even by the likelihood that this giant of a butterfly had crossed the Atlantic in the wake of a mid-September gale. They wanted blackberries. The odd thing was that 1992 was not a known Monarch autumn; none had been recorded before this particular sighting, and very few subsequently. But butterflies specialise in the sudden and unexpected, so much so that it is wise to expect the unexpected.
Yet another mild winter ushered in the 1993 butterfly season. A visit to Devon on February 24th found hedges flushed with bright green Hawthorn leaves and starred with white Blackthorn and golden sallow blossom. The first butterflies took to the air on March 8th. Mine was a Peacock, which was hardly surprising, as this butterfly had been numerous in 1992.
March was dry and mild, April all over the place. One of the few reasonable days in April was the 24th, when I found myself on Meathop Moss in south Cumbria. The lady who walks the butterfly transect there was leaving as I arrived. She had just counted 38 Green Hairstreaks along the transect route. I ended up feeling that she should have been sent back to do it properly, for I counted 100 in eleven minutes around young birch bushes along the southern edge of the nature reserve, and went on to count 213 in 25 cloudy minutes in a walk across the edge of the open moss. That was the best Green Hairstreak display I had ever seen, and the butterfly was clearly not fully out. The diary remarks: They were all so beautifully fresh, emerald green and dark. Several were seen taking nectar from Cranberry flowers, no other plant being in flower. Shortly afterwards the Green Hairstreak emerged in unusually good numbers back in the Cotswolds, and elsewhere. Why, we know not, but it was definitely the butterfly of the spring – and of the year.
On one of the few pleasant days that May produced, I visited Halse Combe on the National Trust's vast Holnicote estate, near Porlock in Somerset, for the first time. I knew the landscape, for my Uncle Percy, the children's author J P Martin, had lived nearby, at Timberscombe. Heath Fritillaries were fluttering everywhere, the males roaming in loose packs through unfurling Bracken fronds in search of freshly emerged females. Groups of these exquisite black and amber butterflies were feeding greedily on Common Tormentil and Lesser Stitchwort flowers. When an afternoon breeze sprang up, they drifted down the slope to congregate for an evening bask in a rush-filled hollow along a stream that murmurs sweet nothings down the valley bottom. They looked in flight like a dark version of the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, though more graceful, with a gentle skimming flight. Along the gorse-lined path that runs along a mid-slope contour in this hot, steamy moorland-edge combe, male Green Hairstreaks were tussling with each other.
In early June I was back up in south Lakeland, to help with another nature conservation training course at Newby Bridge. Again, the course assembled on a Sunday evening, allowing a full day's butterflying around Morecambe Bay. This time I was wiser, pacing myself better, though I still visited Warton Crag, Beetham Fell, Yewbarrow, Latterbarrow and Meathop Moss. I had visited most of these sites on the corresponding Sunday the previous year, but the butterfly season was running later this time. In contrast to 1992, Pearl-bordered Fritillary was still at peak season, whilst its cousin the Small Pearl-bor
dered Fritillary was only just beginning to emerge that day; on Meathop Moss, the Large Heath had not started, though the Green Hairstreaks were still numerous, if terribly old, faded and grey. Two females were watched laying their eggs on Cranberry. Two days later, over on Arnside Knott Rabbit pressure had increased alarmingly during the 1992 drought and was now threatening the future of the Duke of Burgundy colony on the low hill to the west of the Knott, known as Heathwaite. Indeed, what had been quite a strong colony eight years ago was in the process of dying out, owing to a dramatic increase in the Rabbit population. There was little that could be done.
In mid-June, a visit to one of the top butterfly sites in the UK, the MOD's vast holding of chalk grassland and scrub at Porton Down, north-east of Salisbury, found butterfly populations at a very low ebb. A wet week had knocked out the spring butterflies, and the high-summer species were waiting for the weather to improve. We saw about 20 per cent of the expected butterflies, and were reduced to searching for Dark Green Fritillary larvae hiding under Hairy Violet clumps – their larval feeding marks are salient and fairly diagnostic.
The weather improved at the very end of June, producing three hot summer days. Drop everything and go up north, for the Mountain Ringlet! Unfortunately, the weather did the dirty on us, or rather the forecast did – the forecast mini-heatwave confined itself to southern Britain, while the north descended into fog and bog. A few miserable-looking Mountain Ringlets were walked up during a long wander over Wrynose Breast to Cold Pike and Pike o’Blisco and back. Then a chilly mountain wind sprang up. It was time to abandon the Lakes, albeit after kicking up a few chilled Large Heaths on Meathop Moss. The truth is that Lakeland offers the best butterflying in Britain when midsummer is kind, and the worst when it isn't.
In early July, down at Site X, the Large Blue reintroduction site, two of us bumped into old Arthur Brown, tenant farmer. A Dartmoor man born and bred, he leant over a rickety gate one evening, spat once or twice, and offered his perspective on the Large Blue's fortunes there over the years.
‘It wur all right back-along,’ he related in slow drawl, ‘so long as we wur burning the gorze and doing everything that comes natural to a varmin’ man, if you know what I mean like.’
I didn't, and neither did colleague Nigel Adams.
‘The best year it evurr 'ad was after we'd spread basic slag [a cheap fertiliser] over the whole [adjective deleted] place!’
This was actually true, though only because that incident coincided with ideal spring and summer weather for the butterfly and its fastidious caterpillars – the fertiliser went on to cause significant damage.
Old Arthur continued, with a twinkle in his eye: ‘We had butturrflies coming out of my backside!’
Then he paused, whilst our tongues recovered from a severe biting, before continuing: ‘Then there was a lot of thissing and thatting, if you know what I mean like.’
We didn't, and inquired, so he continued: ‘Well, they asked us to do this, so we did that for 'em but it wurrn't no good. No, they says, it's this we wants not that, so we did that for 'em but they didn't like that, they wanted this. And we went on and on thissing and thatting till the cows came home and [adverb deleted] milked themselves. Then they stopped us burning the furze, [noun deleted] knows why!’
There was a lengthy pause before he reached his climax, ‘and the bugger went and died out!’
Reading between the lines, Nigel, a wise countryman from farming stock himself, and I both rather suspected that the thissing and thatting might have not involved doing what was actually being asked. Tentatively, one of us suggested it, and were promptly treated to a long shaggy dog story about how one of his sons, ‘boys’ he called them, lost a leg in an accident involving a tractor, a Fordson Major or a Davey Brown 910 – Arthur couldn't remember which.
The interview culminated with the threat of a major revelation:
‘'Ere, let me tell 'ee about the time I sent the vicar's daughter home with 'er knickers in 'er handbag.’
At that point, Nigel and I exited hurriedly.
This may or may not be a fair account of how, and indeed why, the original UK race of the Large Blue died out at Site X back in 1979. Shortly after this most memorable of meetings old Arthur took to his bed with a bottle of Scotch and announced that he was buggered. All of Dartmoor attended his funeral. We shall not see his likes again. Professor Jeremy Thomas, whose life has been devoted to the conservation of the Large Blue, may be able to tell this tale with a finer degree of resolution.
By the end of a July which the weathermen irritatingly termed ‘changeable’ I had managed to see 51 species of butterfly. The diary states: Sounds impressive, but isn't, as I've only walked up Lulworth Skipper and Large Heath, seen 30 seconds’ worth of Wood White, seven Mountain Ringlets, one Adonis Blue (in rain), etc. I've hardly seen any females laying eggs. Never substitute quality for quantity.
August tried hard, but butterfly populations were badly reduced by a gale mid-month. Before that, I spent three days surveying the National Trust chalk grasslands on the North Downs escarpment between Shere, east of Guildford, and Reigate. Many of these slopes had been severely damaged by excessive Rabbit grazing during the drought summers of 1989, 1990 and 1992. On the thin soil slopes the grasses had been grazed out, so that the only vegetation cover that remained consisted of the aromatic herbs that Rabbits avoid and the more prickly or toxic varieties of scrub. Of course, in the absence of a tight grass cover, the chalky soil became a perfect seedbed for scrub seedlings. This explained how the downs scrubbed up so badly after Rabbit populations were lost to myxomatosis during the 1950s. Worse, we were wanting to graze these slopes with stock, though they essentially needed browsing (to control scrub) rather than grazing (to regulate coarse grasses). Eventually we learnt that time creates these problems, and that time alone solves them. Moreover, farm animals only effectively browse bushes after they have consumed the grasses; and even then they avoid some scrub species, notably Hawthorn, together with toxic seedlings.
Down at Dover, in mid-August, an immigration of Large Whites was taking place – loose groups of them were seen flopping low over the Channel and ascending the white cliffs, where the females immediately began to lay their eggs on the abundant Sea Cabbage that grows there, favouring the smaller, younger plants. The Dover area is a superb locality for the two cabbage whites, especially for the Large White. Advice to gardeners in the Dover district: net your brassicas, carefully. In those days, Langdon Hole, a chalk combe on the cliff above Dover harbour, was dominated by impenetrable Tor-grass, tall, dense and full of the dead blades of years gone by. The Lulworth Skipper would have loved it, but was not known to cross the Channel from the distant Calais downs and occurred in England no nearer than Swanage. Moreover, we knew from historic records that this had been a rich site for short-turf butterflies and orchids. No farmer was interested in running stock there, not least because this was cereal country. We decided to fence the cliff tops and introduce our own grazing animals, native-breed ponies, which thrive on Tor-grass. The practical work was done by Jimmy Green, a big-hearted cockney bruiser who had become the National Trust's first warden there, probably as a calling. There was nothing Jimmy would not do for his patch. Gradually he tamed Langdon with his bare hands, including its vertiginous Tor-grass. Jimmy, who struggled to tell a buttercup from a daisy, is one of the many unsung heroes of nature conservation.
Steadily, a combination of cold nights and pulses of heavy rains brought the 1993 butterfly season to a premature end, though the odd Red Admiral persisted until around Bonfire Night, the traditional end of the butterfly season. The year ended with something approximating to a white Christmas, though the light dusting had melted by the time the turkey came out of the oven.
19 High adventures in the mid-1990s
The 1994 butterflying season was launched by a Small Tortoiseshell at Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill's former residence west of Sevenoaks in Kent, with shimmering views over the High Weald. There are m
any hidden aspects of Churchill, such as his ability as an artist, his passion for bricklaying, his love of cats and, most notably for us, his interest in butterflies. He began collecting butterflies at prep school, on the Sussex downs, then maintained his interest abroad as a young man, collecting in India, South Africa and the West Indies. It was, of course, a common hobby at the time. His collections, sadly, have not survived. Indeed, one was eaten by a rat. A letter home recalls that he then caught the rat, and had it dispatched by his pet dog, which happened to be called Winston. After the Second World War Churchill's passion was revived, partly through the energies of L Hugh Newman, who ran a butterfly farm at nearby Westerham, selling livestock and specimens from home and abroad. The farm had been started by Newman's father, Leonard, a deeply respected lepidopterist, in a back garden in Bexley in 1894. Hugh Newman persuaded Churchill to breed and release butterflies at Chartwell, and advised on how to develop a butterfly garden in the grounds, elements of which still survive. Churchill knew his butterflies, and not merely by their English names. In correspondence with Newman he freely uses the scientific names.
In Pursuit of Butterflies Page 24