When it came to butterflies and moths, Hugh Newman epitomised over-enthusiasm. He got carried away with himself at Chartwell, making naive attempts to establish the Black-veined White and the continental subspecies of the Swallowtail there. These attempts ended farcically, when the gardeners burnt the muslin sleeves containing the Black-veined White caterpillars and cut down the Swallowtail's Fennel plants. Churchill wanted the garden full of butterflies for his famous summer parties, but quickly realised that butterflies have a strong dispersal instinct, a fact that Newman had curiously overlooked. Churchill therefore tactfully dispensed with Newman's services. Nonetheless, Newman went on to other great things, becoming a regular contributor to Nature Parliament on BBC Radio's Children's Hour and appearing on Desert Island Discs.
On the positive side, Newman converted a summerhouse, originally built as a game larder, into an insectorium. Here Churchill used to watch caterpillars feeding, and would release freshly emerged butterflies into the gardens. In effect, the butterfly borders at Chartwell are probably the oldest surviving butterfly garden in the country. Moreover, we can regard Churchill as a pioneer of wildlife gardening. The National Trust, which runs Chartwell, restored Churchill's butterfly house and breeds a small number of common butterflies for release into the garden.
Winter sogged on, enlightened by a few periods when the rain turned briefly to snow, only to melt as the temperature rose fractionally and the rains returned. Churchill would have loathed it. March dripped and dripped, before eventually producing a few reasonable days. One pleasant day in early March was spent looking for Heath Fritillary larvae at Halse Combe, with naturalist colleague Nigel Hester. We found 20 of these tiny dark creatures, fresh out of hibernation, basking in loose groups of two or three amongst Bracken litter where their foodplant, Common Cow-wheat, was germinating. The plant is hard to spot, consisting of a pair of tiny leaves which can be mistaken for baby gorse seedlings. It was interesting to find that the caterpillars appeared from hibernation just as their foodplant, an annual, was germinating.
April roared in, with a gale which uprooted a large number of trees. It then became cold and wet, ensuring a terrible lambing season. Marsh Fritillary larvae, though, were numerous at Strawberry Banks, a magical Cotswold combe near Stroud. The Orange-tip started late, kicking off on St George's day. May began well, producing an abundance of Green Hairstreaks on the lower slopes of Rodborough Common, and the first Duke of Burgundies of the year. Things were looking up, not least when a scatter of Painted Ladies and Red Admirals turned up during a visit to the south Devon coast. The first Marsh and Pearl-bordered fritillaries appeared in the Cotswolds on May 15th. Then the weather fell apart, spectacularly, and spring butterflies suffered terribly. The year went into free fall, producing a wet end to May and a truly vile first three weeks of June. A spectacular emergence of Marsh Fritillary at Strawberry Banks was blasted away by foul weather. It was money-back time.
Suddenly, and dramatically, the year turned itself round, on June 23rd, as the first proper anticyclone of the season developed. I was surveying Heath Fritillaries in Bin Combe, the deep heathy combe running eastwards off Dunkery Beacon, on Exmoor. It seemed that the fritillaries had all hatched at once. At one point I counted 225 in 20 minutes, which by modern butterflying standards is top notch. A few fresh Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were skimming low over the rushy streamside in the combe bottom and, surprise surprise, a stray female Pearl-bordered Fritillary. The latter proved to be both historic and melancholic, for it was the last Pearl-bordered Fritillary ever recorded on Exmoor.
A week-long trip to Northern Ireland followed. By Northern Ireland standards the weather was reasonable, but the butterfly season was struggling. High-summer species like the Dark Green Fritillary and Large Heath had not started to emerge, in fact Primroses and Bluebells were still in flower along the North Antrim cliffs. It was on this trip that I discovered, and fell deeply in love with, Murlough Dunes NNR, a wild land of mobile and fixed acidic sand dunes and heathland on the County Down coast, in the shadow of the Mountains of Mourne. It is one of Northern Ireland's top butterfly sites, with fifteen species breeding annually including Marsh Fritillary, Dark Green Fritillary, Grayling and what in those days was simply regarded as the Wood White. The Marsh Fritillary first appeared at Murlough in 1978, colonising one or two of the more inland dune slacks (hollows). Then, it expanded considerably during the great Marsh Fritillary years of 1982–1985, in keeping with its performance on the mainland. Since then its fortunes at Murlough have ebbed and flowed, but as in the Cotswolds it had emerged in good numbers in 1994. During damp drizzly weather the males were at roost, but the females were crawling around, seeking to lay their eggs. Butterflies cannot hang about waiting for perfect weather in Northern Ireland. The Wood White colonised Murlough in 1981, breeding on Bird's-foot Trefoil growing amongst loose Burnet Rose scrub on the inland dune slopes. Since then it has steadily expanded, to colonise the fore dunes. My diary entry for June 30th 1994 is almost visionary: It's a very different butterfly in NI to how it is in England; much more widespread, less woodland associated, different habits, and a different colour. In little over a decade the Northern Ireland Wood Whites had been proven to be a different species, the Cryptic Wood White.
The weather had sorted itself – either that or I had dumped the lousy weather in Northern Ireland. An excellent July and a reasonable August materialised. The high-summer butterflies emerged and made the most of the sunshine. Marbled Whites, Ringlets and Small Blues abounded on the Cotswold limestone grasslands, and White Admirals, Silver-washed Fritillaries and even the elusive Purple Emperor impressed in the woods. It was an unusually good year for White Admiral and Purple Emperor, two species that normally appear in low numbers after a miserable June. They broke their own rules in 1994, but that's butterflies all over. I saw impressive flights of both species in the Straits Inclosure in Alice Holt Forest, Hampshire, and went on to find a goodly number of Purple Emperor eggs on shaded sallow leaves. However, back near Porlock, in north-west Somerset, the High Brown Fritillary appeared in rather disappointing numbers, presumably the victim of poor spring and early summer weather. July butterflies hurried over in the heat – a matter of short, sharp and sweet flight seasons. By the end of the month patches of drought were showing on some downland slopes.
As July ended a host of immigrant butterflies, moths and hoverflies suddenly appeared, crossing the English Channel in the wake of a series of thunderstorms. During five hours on Ballard Down, the towering chalk down above Swanage, I saw six golden Clouded Yellows, twenty or so Painted Ladies, a dozen or more Red Admirals and innumerable Small Whites. They eclipsed an excellent flight of Dark Green Fritillaries. The Ladies and Admirals had reached Arnside and Silverdale, on the Cumbria/Lancashire border, by the time I got there a few days later. The Scotch Argus was at its peak on Arnside Knott but its numbers were unimpressive. The Knott had been grazed during the late winter period by Shetland ponies, who took a strong liking to the Blue Moor-grass, and hammered it. We had grazed the Knott too hard, to the detriment of the Scotch Argus. The eggs I saw being laid were all placed in the few remaining ranker areas of Blue Moor-grass grassland. There was a need to follow the egg-laying females and discover precisely where they laid, and also to search for the larvae in early summer.
Two important discoveries were made during that trip, both involving my children. They now numbered four, but only my two elder daughters had accompanied me on this occasion. Firstly, I discovered that children fall instantly in love with limestone pavement, that other-worldly terrain of bare Carboniferous Limestone rock, clints and grykes, of ferns and stunted trees. Secondly, Miss Camilla ‘Millie’ Oates picked a bunch of Common Knapweed flowers from the lane below the Knott, and stuck them in a grass tussock in the main Scotch Argus area, where few plants were in flower. A procession of hungry Scotch Argus butterflies visited that bunch of flowers, as many as three at a time, and an old High Brown Fritillary. In those days very few plants fl
owered on the Knott in early August.
Kingcombe called, for a weekend ‘butterfly course’ in mid-August, down in Dorset. The weather was set fair, and the butterflies fairer. Hod Hill, a historic butterfly collecting ground on a steep chalk dome outside Blandford Forum, laid on a stunning Clouded Yellow show. Half a dozen or so were parading over a field of Lucerne growing on the slope below the hill fort, and others were flying at pace over the sunny rampart slopes. One was the pale white female, form helice, which the diary recalls was caught with a reverse sweep (a legitimate butterfly-catching stroke long before Sir Ian Botham pioneered it in cricket – one of the glories of running a butterfly course is that one can carry and even use a butterfly net without causing offence). We saw 24 species of butterfly that afternoon, and found well over a hundred gregarious ‘webs’ of tiny Marsh Fritillary larvae. Fuelled by Kingcombe's homemade cake and serenity we saw 30 species of butterfly on the wing that weekend, and found the immature stages of six more. That's quality for you.
Butterflies are essential to childhood, and to any seaside holiday; and there are few better venues for butterflies and seaside than Compton Bay on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight. This is truest in mid-August when the weather is set fair and Clouded Yellows are in. Furthermore, there are few better campsites anywhere in Britain than the site run by the Phillips family at Compton Farm on the island. In the mid-1990s, when old Denny Phillips was still alive, the farm was a glorious adventure playground for children, for Denny collected old tractors and other ancient farm equipment. The deader it was, the more he liked it. Children could play on the rusting Fordson Majors, watch the cows being milked in an old herringbone milking parlour, and help with some farm jobs. It was a return to my own childhood days. To young Arion Oates, aged four, it was Paradise. Health and Safety thinking had scarcely penetrated the farm. Instead, the place was run by common sense, a love of life, and rural contentment. Butterflying had to take second place on this trip, but that was no problem, for Clouded Yellows patrolled the camp site and Adonis and Chalkhill Blues descended from the downland slopes to visit clover flowers. Also, Compton Beach is not just a superb sandy beach, for those who do not require ‘facilities’, but is backed by sandy slumped cliffs alive with Common Blues, Wall Browns and, in early summer, Glanville Fritillaries. Larval webs of the latter were frequent on the cliffs that August, suggesting that Compton would host a massive flight of the butterfly the following June (it did). Here a father can relax, and listen to England's fast bowlers blasting South Africa away on the radio (Devon Malcolm, nine for 57), whilst the children play in the sea. Our first and last butterflies of the trip were Clouded Yellows. It was the sort of holiday after which one needs a couple of days off, to recover.
Unfortunately, September was dire, the poorest since 1983, and early October brought some sharp frosts. This terminated the 1994 butterfly season prematurely, though the odd Clouded Yellow was seen on the Isle of Wight when I returned there on a work visit in October. But the 1994 butterfly season had set its successor up very well.
The new year was seen in on a clear, black night, with England under-performing in a Test match Down Under. Winter was wet and mild, and London experienced its wettest January. The first butterfly of 1995 did not appear until March 10th, late, when a golden Brimstone was seen dancing through sunlight that slanted its way past Beech trunks on the slopes of Three Groves Wood, by Strawberry Banks in the Frome valley east of Stroud. Such sightings can only portend a good summer. Every winter Brimstones hibernate on the south-facing slope of the sheltered combe at the mouth of that wood. They seem to have habitual wintering quarters.
The National Trust had just acquired Collard Hill in mid-Somerset, a stretch of steep downland on the south-facing escarpment of the Polden Hills, the calcareous clay ridge that runs east from Bridgwater to Street before turning south towards Somerton. Collard Hill offered spectacular views over the Somerset Levels and along the flanks of the Poldens. Moreover, the hillside, which had been heavily grazed by sheep, shouted two words at me: Large Blue. It would need to be assessed by the Large Blue experts, Jeremy Thomas and Dave Simcox. The butterfly was thriving at Green Down, a Somerset Wildlife Trust reserve a few kilometres away, and there were aspirations to restore it to other sites in the Poldens. Little is known about the history of Collard Hill, though for years the word FISONS was embossed on its steep slope, as a novel advertisement aimed at travellers on the Somerton-to-Street road below – and perhaps as a statement of the power of agriculture in Somerset. In 1995 the gentler slopes consisted of fertilised rye grass, cut annually for silage. These areas have since reverted splendidly to calcareous grassland and have become heavily studded with ant hills. The place was obviously keen on butterflies, offering up the first Small Tortoiseshell of the year and a few Brown Hairstreak eggs on young Blackthorn shoots. There was history in the making here.
In early April the first migrant butterflies showed up, testosterone-loaded male Red Admirals and a Painted Lady, battling for possession of a sheltered hilltop glade high up in the Blackdown Hills, south of Taunton. It seemed a long way to travel, just to squabble, but these boys knew where females in need of their services would appear, and were up for it. Spring was breaking through nicely, only for a cloudy northerly airflow to develop, which dominated for the rest of the month. May then got off to a flyer, bringing out the first Pearl-bordered Fritillaries in Cirencester Park Woods and on Daneway Banks, at the head of the Frome valley in the Cotswolds. But once again, spring capitulated, after having all but broken through. The weather collapse commenced on May 8th, Victory in Europe Day, fifty years on. Butterflying stalled, then the butterflies themselves stalled as quotidian gloom descended, alleviated only by a couple of bright days in late May. Gradually the spring butterflies gave up the ghost, exasperated. Like us, they can take only so much.
There was only one thing to do, work caterpillars – and there was an urgent need to look closely at Scotch Argus larvae on Arnside Knott, which had been too heavily grazed. Scotch Argus larvae, like most other members of the Brown family, Satyridae, are night feeders. That meant there was time for short visits to Meathop Moss and Yewbarrow, two of my heartlands at Witherslack in south Cumbria, before ascending the Knott at dusk. At Meathop Moss, a raised bog, Green Hairstreak females were observed laying eggs on the buds and terminal leaves of Cranberry. The young larvae would then feed on, and even in, the developing fruits. In the secret glades surrounded by ancient Yew trees on lonely Yewbarrow, Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were numerous, feeding on Bird's-foot Trefoil flowers, and fresh males of its close cousin the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary were also emerging. Then, in the midst of them all was an extremely pale, almost white specimen. But was it a Pearl-bordered or a Small Pearl-bordered, euphrosyne or selene? This proved to be one of the hardest pieces of butterfly identification I have ever attempted. It was a male, that much could be determined by its behaviour, and it was obviously freshly emerged. Of course I had no net, and the beast proved distinctly camera-shy. The underside, which should have revealed all, proved to be decidedly unhelpful. Before it flew tantalisingly away over a belt of Hazel bushes, it visited a few flowers for nectar – Cat's-ears – and it completely ignored the Bird's-foot Trefoil flowers that the Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were favouring. This pushed it towards Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. My guess is that it was Boloria selene ab. pallida, but the truth is that these things are sent to try us – and they do.
At dusk, naturalist colleague John Hooson, MSc student Steve Beaumont and I ascended the Knott, to search for Scotch Argus larvae. Our aim was to set Steve up to conduct an ecological study of the larvae. A Little Owl repeatedly mocked us from the bushes, so much so that a ten-minute bombardment of scree and clitter was necessary to move the irritating thing on. The literature on finding Scotch Argus larvae proved misleading, not least a 1895 claim by a Mr Haggart of Galashiels that, ‘no artificial light can be used as the larvae immediately drop down.’ In three heady hours we st
ruggled to find six larvae between us, finding none until it was pitch black. Part of the problem was that under lamplight they mimic the dead flower heads of Blue Moor-grass, in size, shape and colour. Interestingly, the two smallest larvae were both feeding on Sheep's Fescue, the larger ones on Blue Moor-grass. We returned the following night, which was warmer; so much warmer that I stumbled upon an active pairing of Homo sapiens: ‘I hope you have twins, dear!’ I muttered as a blessing on their union, and scuttled off. We found seven larvae, all in the final instar and feeding on Blue Moor-grass, all in turf about 10 centimetres tall. Steve went on to spend several more nights looking for Scotch Argus larvae on the Knott, though he was hampered by a lengthy spell of utterly vile weather in mid-June. His conclusion was that, on Arnside Knott, the butterfly requires turf that is at least 8 centimetres tall during May and June. Had he been able to start earlier in the year he could have investigated whether the very small larvae prefer Sheep's Fescue, then grade on to the broader-leaved Blue Moor-grass as they develop. Years later, Paul Kirkland from Butterfly Conservation published an excellent study on the ecology of Scotch Argus larvae, indicating that grasslands can be grazed too tight for this lovely butterfly.
Diary, June 12th 1995: Vile. Uniform leaden grey skies, slow moving on a northerly airstream. Again cold, only 14°C max. Identical weather to what we had late last May. All because for the last three weeks a big anticyclone has been stuck in the Atlantic. Had it become stuck a few hundred miles further east we would be having a heatwave. As it is we've got the central heating on and the chickens have gone off lay.
In Pursuit of Butterflies Page 25