Eventually the grot cleared away, and the high pressure moved in. I was in Cornwall on the first sunny day, June 21st, close to where my paternal grandfather grew up, a blacksmith's son in Holywell, near Newquay. On Holywell Dunes the Silver-studded Blue was emerging in numbers. This was subspecies cretaceus, which breeds on Bird's-foot Trefoil. And they were unusually large, almost the size of a Common Blue. Fortunately the first brood of the Common Blue had finished, for separating the two species out on the wing might have proved difficult. The females were laying their eggs close to small clumps of Bird's-foot Trefoil amongst open sand, placing the tiny white discs on the undersides of leaves and on moss fronds. The incredible thing is that Holywell Dunes did not exist in grandfather's day, being less than a century old. Grandfather caught Methodism, Strict Methodism at that, and ‘went abroad’ as the Cornish say, settling near Gloucester.
The last few days had been set aside, optimistically, for the Mountain Ringlet on the Lake District high fells. John Hooson and I had found a student, Sarah Shannon from Leicester University, who was keen to do some research on the butterfly for an MSc thesis. Get her to follow the egg-laying females, we thought, and do detailed vegetation quadrats where eggs are laid. Incredibly, the weather came good, and remained so for the rest of the summer: 1995 had broken through. The Mountain Ringlets were only just starting to emerge when I arrived up on Wrynose Pass on June 26th. England was beating the West Indies at Lords, with Dominic Cork taking seven wickets. The world was righting itself.
So was the weather. In fact, from the point of view of studying the Mountain Ringlet the weather righted itself rather too well, for it quickly became too hot for a dark butterfly whose body is covered in black hairs designed to absorb and retain heat in a cool montane environment. In hot weather this butterfly, the females especially, resort to hiding, wings closed, in Mat-grass tussocks – for ages. Hooson, Shannon and Oates stormed the Langdale Pikes, where my rucksack thermometer soared to 26 degrees Celsius. We managed to spot one egg-laying female, who laid two eggs on horizontal blades of Sheep's Fescue grass at lunchtime. Then the ringlets effectively went into a siesta. Eventually the three of us staggered down to the Stickle Tarn Inn to rehydrate. The following day was even hotter, with the Lakeland valley roads melting. We took a more gentle route, up to the saddle between Fleetwith Pike and Grey Knotts, above the Honister Pass youth hostel. There, the Mountain Ringlet was emerging in numbers, Big Bang day, but again most females were shading in grass tussocks. Only two egg-laying females were seen, again laying on horizontal blades of Sheep's Fescue amongst Mat-grass tussocks. I watched one shading female for an hour and a half, before she eventually sprang into action and laid a couple of eggs. At one point a fell runner sped past us, in training for a 72-hour, fourteen-peak marathon to be staged in mid-July, and for which Hooson was also training. There was madness on the high fells that day. Day three was hotter and madder still: the ringlets had retreated to the tussocks before we ascended, and were not in the egg-laying vein at all. Instead, I came upon an elderly couple, National Trust members it later transpired, standing stark naked beneath a minor waterfall: ‘Come on in!’ they shouted, ‘it's fantastic!’ History does not record whether their invitation was accepted or not. Sarah remained up on the fells for several more sweltering days, but only saw a few more Mountain Ringlet eggs laid. The experience probably put her off butterflies for life.
The High Fells had not experienced anything as mad as the 1995 Mountain Ringlet Expedition since Samuel Taylor Coleridge's great ‘Circumcision of the Lakes’ in August 1802. Then, Coleridge set off for a two-week feral jaunt, taking the house broom handle as a staff, and leaving the besom twigs scattered on the kitchen floor. That angered Mrs C considerably, for the marriage was already in free fall. He lost the broom handle during a lunatic descent of Skiddaw. We know all this because he sent a detailed account of the expedition to the woman of his insatiable dreams – who was not Mrs C but one Sara Hutchinson, Wordsworth's sister-in-law. Coleridge effectively invented fell walking, and probably fell running. He would have been an excellent partner on the 1995 Mountain Ringlet expedition.
July dragged on in stupefying heat. The Purple Emperor emerged only in low numbers, and went over rapidly in the heat. White Admiral numbers, however, were impressive. Several days were spent searching for High Brown Fritillaries in the New Forest. But I was too late, the butterfly had almost certainly died out. It turned out that the female I had seen in Matley Passage, south-east of Lyndhurst, back in early July 1992 was the last High Brown Fritillary recorded in the New Forest, formerly one of its national headquarters. Radical changes in the Forest had led to the collapse of the metapopulation structure so vital to the butterfly. The High Brown had been booted out of the inclosures (the woods) by twentieth-century forestry and had become restricted to the open heaths, where the bracken stands it could breed in jumped in and out of suitability. We must stand in silence for the New Forest adippe.
My sojourn in the Forest had one memorable moment of gross eccentricity. Late on in a sweltering day, of intense heat and high humidity, I wandered off the beaten track in one of the less well-frequented inclosures and followed the course of a gravel-bottomed stream in search of a pool in which to bathe. This was a tradition amongst the old New Forest butterfly collectors; Sydney Castle Russell himself was a keen exponent. Within seconds of immersing myself in a cool shaded pool a swarm of teenage girls burst through the bracken. Worse, they were French, and though hopelessly lost, ooh-la-laad me mercilessly. Unfortunately, I could understand them. There is only one thing a gentleman can do in such a situation.
There was some good news on the High Brown Fritillary front that summer. The butterfly resurged well on the steep Bracken slopes of Bossington Hill, near Porlock on the edge of Exmoor. Surveying for them here, however, necessitated swimming, breast stroke, through head high Bracken, with bramble and rubble underfoot. Up at Bircher Common, in north Herefordshire, the High Brown positively abounded, at least over the core 10-hectare area of Bracken. Best of all, the southern end of the Malvern Hills revealed a respectable flight of this magnificent golden insect for the first time in years, on the slope below the obelisk in Eastnor Park and on the east-facing slope of Swinyard Hill. Numbers seemed to be back to their 1988 levels, though way below the abundance of 1986. Sadly, though, the High Brown Fritillary collapsed horrifically throughout the Malverns after the summer of 1995, and now appears to be lost from those loveliest of hills, from Edward Elgar's heartland. I saw my last of the Malvern High Browns that summer. It hurts now to return, not least because I believe conservation effort could have been more successful there.
Thursday July 20th dawned cloudless and calm – the sort of weather in which The Sun newspaper runs its ‘Phew What a Scorcher!’ headline. Indeed, the temperature went on to reach 32 degrees in central London. It was the National Trust's centenary year, and staff were invited to a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, attended by Her Majesty, a small prim figure beneath a pale green parasol, held perpendicularly without a single waver. She was, as ever, Duty personified. I had butterflyed before in St James's Park and knew there was a strong colony of Holly Blue there. Indeed, a dozen freshly emerged males were present, buzzing around bushes. Then, about twenty were seen in the Palace grounds. This was of significance, as nationally the butterfly was at a low ebb at the time: I saw but a singleton in 1994, and had not seen any in 1995 before this day. The Palace gardens also revealed a small colony of Essex Skipper along the lake margins, and a large colony of the rare mining bee Macropis europaea. It was well worth having to wear a suit and tie.
August began with a heatwave, and carried on regardless. It was the hottest August since records began in the seventeenth century, and almost the hottest month ever. It was also the sunniest August, and the fourth driest. August 1st was staggeringly hot, and was spent unwisely trying to count hyperactive Silver-spotted Skippers whizzing over the short turf of Watlington Hill, my old butterflying heartla
nd on the Chilterns escarpment. It was the best flight of this challenging little butterfly I had ever encountered, certainly in terms of density of butterflies, though the population at the MOD's Porton Down in Wiltshire ranges over a far greater area. The skippers were omnipresent. At one stage a dozen or so males shot off together in pursuit of a virgin female. God knows what happened when they forced the poor girl to the ground – I had had enough by then and left Nature to sort itself out. The weather had got into a strange phase: day after cloudless day thunder clouds developed in late afternoon, offering a few rumbles, bad-light-stop-play conditions for cricketers, and one or two large drops of rain – before dissipating, to clear into a sultry evening. A hot weekend followed at Kingcombe, in west Dorset, running another butterfly course, only the Clouded Yellows were not in. Indeed, I did not see a Clouded Yellow all year. They tend to take a season off after a bumper year.
A new anticyclone moved in, this time over northern England. I followed it, with the family, to study the Scotch Argus on Arnside Knott further. We camped at a low-facility camp site on the south-west flank of Arnside Knott. In contrast to the drought conditions down south, the Morecambe Bay limestone hills looked positively verdant, though here too the grasses were destined to brown off as the heat intensified. The Graylings and High Brown Fritillaries were going over fast, but the Scotch Argus was just a little past peak season. My timing was perfect, the females would be laying the bulk of their eggs. Hooson appeared, bronzed, to assist me. We were armed with colour-coded plant support stakes, to insert close to each egg as it was laid, carefully keeping watch on the female. We would return to analyse the vegetation structure at the egg site later. A familiar problem befell us, though: it was so hot that the females were sitting around, wings closed, shading, for ages, comatose.
Diary, August 9th 1995: I followed one from 12.30 until I lost her amongst a sudden bevy of other females at 1.50. She sat still, wings closed, until 1.02 when she literally jumped 30 cm and quickly laid one egg, 6 cm up on dead Blue Moor-grass in a dense, 8 cm tall tussock. After a short bask she jumped again, at 1.07, to lay another egg on a live Sheep's Fescue grass 4 cm up in 7 cm turf, before flying 2 m to settle, wings closed, shading again. At 1.30 she again jumped 30 cm and, after a short crawl, laid 6 cm up on the underside of a Common Tormentil leaf amongst 8 cm tall Blue Moor-grass turf. Then she returned to shading before, suddenly, she joined a loose pack of similar-looking females that arrived in the glade.
The diary continues:
We then spent ages watching inactive females shading before two females suddenly crash-landed at my feet, at 3.06. One of them quickly laid an egg, in a similar situation.
And that was it for the day: four eggs, hours and hours of inaction, and a lot of sunburn. The family had gone off to visit Beatrix Potter, wisely.
A change in tactic was required, so the following day we visited Smardale, a Cumbria Wildlife Trust reserve on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, vaguely near Kirkby Stephen but actually near Nowhere, deep in the heart of tranquillity itself. It is one of the most idyllic, if lonely, places I have ever visited, with an intense spirit of place. The reserve consists of some 2 kilometres of disused railway line (one of dear Dr Beeching's, probably), with steep grassy cuttings and embankments, and a spectacular viaduct over a river valley. Smardale is an essential pilgrimage site for anyone with an interest in our butterflies, and is the only other site in England where the Scotch Argus occurs, after Arnside Knott. Here the butterfly was in stupendous abundance, in a series of colonies strung out along the old railway. It is very much a morning butterfly here, as the afternoon sun leaves many of the colonies in shade. Of course, in the intense heat of August 1995 the females shut up shop for the day at lunchtime, and not a single egg was seen being laid. One of the difficulties was that the butterfly was in such profusion here that males were forever encountering the females, and pestering them, such that egg laying became extremely difficult. The children loved this place deeply, not least the viaduct (by Thomas Bouch). Also, they found Otter spraints along the river and, best of all, piles of White-clawed Crayfish shells left over from Otter meals. On this day the Scotch Argus claimed the crown of Butterfly of the Year 1995.
The summer had another trick up its sleeve. The Brown Hairstreak put on an annus mirabilis show on Noar Hill, back in Hampshire. The emergence began there in late July – the first time I had recorded the butterfly in July at Noar Hill, as traditionally it started there around August 7th. A visit on August 14th produced a tally of 41 in two hours, 25 of them feeding on Hemp Agrimony flowers. This Hairstreak had been relatively numerous on the reserve back in September 1977, but this was significantly better. Perhaps the butterflies were more keen than usual in seeking nectar in the sustained and intense heat? I can offer another theory. Throughout the 1980s and into the nineties Noar Hill was frequented each September by the West Sussex naturalist Doris Ashby. This was her butterfly, and she loved it dearly. Doris was Midhurst born and bred, and spoke with a strong Sussex accent – such that many people found her unintelligible. She was one of the best all-round naturalists I have had the privilege to meet, and entirely self-taught. Her relationship with Nature was deep and honest, and was shared with her beloved dog Cathy, an adorable Battersea dog. She abhorred blood sports, was secretary to the Midhurst branch of the Labour Party, and had worked as a gardener on various big estates. Doris had a dodgy heart and had been instructed to slow down, but being Doris, and it being early spring she did the opposite – and suffered a massive heart attack after a morning watching Adders on a local common. What I witnessed at Noar Hill on August 14th 1995 was the Doris Ashby Memorial Flight.
A long lazy week was spent camping on Compton Farm on the Isle of Wight again, only this year there were no Clouded Yellows. Instead, the Camberwell Beauty had showed up. Some 350 were seen nationally, mainly in eastern counties, having migrated across the North Sea from Scandinavia on easterly winds. They frequented the shady side of Buddleia bushes – apparently, for I never saw one. The downs above Compton had turned grey with drought but were alive with Adonis and Chalkhill Blues. The diary recalls that I spent much time floating on an air bed in Compton Bay contemplating Tennyson's poetical works. After a lengthy debate I decided not to open Tennyson's poetical works but to find out whether they floated or not. They did.
But the great summer of 1995 descended suddenly into the wettest September since 1976. The fine weather returned for October and early November, enabling the Red Admiral to appear in immense numbers, and Small Coppers and Wall Browns to put on a good third brood. Some butterflies lingered on during a decidedly mild November, before a cold December ended what had been the warmest year on record for the UK.
The New Forest
Culturally and historically, the New Forest is the spiritual homeland of butterflying in Britain. For well over a century it was the epicentre of butterfly collecting, being revered by collectors as a place of pilgrimage, a promised land, a place of deep belonging. Throughout these decades the Forest hosted annual influxes of collectors, many of them from London. Collectors came as individuals, as groups of friends, or as families, often for short collecting holidays. During the main season, in July, they occupied most of the inns and boarding houses in Brockenhurst, Lyndhurst and Ringwood, small towns which were endeavouring to become holiday venues. There was also a minor season in late spring. Collectors came from many walks of life, but particularly from the professional and upper classes. A number participated in the often lucrative trade of dealing in specimens and livestock, for one unusual specimen could pay for an entire collecting holiday, or more. Snobbery, competitiveness and downright skulduggery were rampant, along with gross eccentricity.
Collecting, not just of butterflies but also of moths, beetles and bird eggs, and some other taxa, was almost a mania during the Victorian era. The Forest, as it was and is still known, gained a reputation for being a great collecting venue as rail links with London became established, primarily during the 1860s
. The Forest, being Crown land, was effectively open-access land at a time when most countryside was distinctly private – and butterflies and moths abounded there. During the heyday of butterfly and moth collecting, from the late 1880s through to the First World War, the pastime generated a massive seasonal industry in the Forest – providing accommodation, food and drink, transport hire (pony and traps and the like) and forest guides. Some of the Forest keepers (crown foresters) ran rather lucrative side-line businesses selling insects and acting as guides, notably the Gulliver family. Livestock and specimens were traded by dealers in hostelries on Saturday nights, particularly in The Rose & Crown in Brockenhurst. The pioneer conservationist W H Hudson (1841–1922) thought very little of it all, describing Lyndhurst in Hampshire Days (1903) as being the place where:
London vomits out its annual crowd of collectors, who fill its numerous and ever-increasing brand-new red-brick lodging houses, and who swarm through all the adjacent woods and heaths, men, women and children (hateful little prigs!) with their vasculums [plants], beer and treacle pots [moth bait], green and blue butterfly nets, killing bottles, and all the detestable paraphernalia of what they would probably call ‘Nature Study’.
Hudson was not normally so vitriolic.
The more experienced collectors were after unusually marked specimens – aberrations or variations – such as the White Admiral with the distinctive white bands completely absent (ab. nigrina) or reduced (ab. semi-nigrina, now called ab. obliterae). Such specimens are symptomatic of strong populations. The collectors particularly prized the greenish colour form of the female Silver-washed Fritillary, form valezina, which at the time was regarded as being a New Forest speciality. They would go to great lengths to procure desired specimens. For example, one account in The Entomologist magazine reads:
In Pursuit of Butterflies Page 26