In August, 1887, whilst driving in a dog-cart from Christchurch, I saw Apatura iris [Purple Emperor] flying along the hedge of a bare roadside. I immediately gave the reins to a friend who was in the cart with me and pursued it with the dog-cart whip, and through a piece of luck I managed to disable it enough to capture it. It was a fine male specimen and not in the least damaged.
It was to the enclosed, ungrazed woods on the more clayey soils that the collectors flocked, though they also made sorties out onto the open heaths. The woods, or inclosures as they are known, had been created under various Acts of Parliament. Some had been established by sowing acorns. Perhaps the most significant of these Acts was that of 1851, known as the New Forest Deer Removal Act, which effectively transferred the Forest from being a royal hunting forest to being a centre for producing oak timber, primarily for the Royal Navy. This act brought about the slaughter of almost the entire deer population – the animals took decades to return. The removal of deer (mainly Fallow Deer) must have led to massive regeneration of brambles and scrub, to the benefit of many butterflies and moths. Many of the descriptions in entomological literature tell of broad rides fringed with luxurious growths of bramble and shrubs such as sallows.
It is difficult for the modern naturalist to imagine the super-abundance of butterflies in the New Forest inclosures of old. Sydney Castle Russell (1866–1955) describes a visit during the hot summer of 1892:
As I slowly walked along, butterflies alarmed by my approach arose in immense numbers to take refuge in the trees above. They were so thick that I could hardly see ahead and indeed resembled a fall of brown leaves.
The summer of 1893 was probably the greatest summer in the history of butterflying in Britain, completely outgunning the likes of 1976. One experienced collector had a remarkable experience in one of the inclosures near Ringwood:
I followed the bed of one of the streams in search of water to drink, and was disappointed in not finding sufficient to quench my thirst, not a pool being left, but I was repaid by the sighting I witnessed; the said bed of the stream for more than a mile was literally crowded with butterflies, the bulk of them being adippe [High Brown Fritillary], paphia [Silver-washed Fritillary] and sibylla [White Admiral].
The great lepidopterist and wildlife artist F W Frohawk (1861–1946) made almost annual pilgrimages to the Forest, and became known by fellow enthusiasts as The Old Man of the Forest. A ride in Parkhill Inclosure, south-east of Lyndhurst, is dedicated to him. He recalls his first visit to the Forest, entering the woods just after a thunderstorm in July 1888:
I shall never forget the impression it made upon my friend and self. Insects of various kinds literally swarmed. Butterflies were in profusion. A. paphia [Silver-washed Fritillary] were in hordes, the var. valezina was met every few yards, as were A. aglaia [Dark Green Fritillary] and A. adippe [High Brown Fritillary]. L. camilla [White Admiral] were sailing about everywhere. On a bank under a sallow in the sunshine a large female A. iris [Purple Emperor] with wings expanded, evidently washed out of the sallow by heavy rain. N. polychloros [Large Tortoiseshell] was of frequent occurrence.
Other, less desirable insects also abounded. Castle Russell recalls: ‘A fly resembling the common house fly [the muscid Hydrotaea irritans] was in clouds and followed one in a dense stream. Immediately you stopped ... they settled on you in a mass.’ He covered his exposed skin with nicotine juice obtained from his pipe, as did other collectors. Some wore beekeeping veils.
Perhaps the most eccentric collector was Sir Vauncey Harpur Crewe, of Calke Abbey (now National Trust) in Derbyshire. A second-generation collector, Sir Vauncey was a recluse who surely suffered from what is now recognised as obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). He specialised in Lepidoptera and taxidermy (mainly birds), and amassed perhaps the greatest collection of British butterflies ever assembled, collecting in the field with his trusty head gamekeeper Agathus Pegg, and by means of his chequebook at sales at Stevens Auction Rooms in The Strand and privately. Sir Vauncey had the habit of issuing forth from the Crown Hotel in Lyndhurst and bagging an inclosure, for a day, or two, or three. He would station flunkies at the entrances to keep out the riff-raff. This led to a series of rumpuses, for he was deemed to be denying rights of access. He banned his four daughters from marrying, communicated with them mainly by means of notes conveyed by footmen, and banished one of them altogether for smoking. Perhaps predictably, he outlived his son and heir. When Sir Vauncey died, in 1924, the bulk of his vast Lepidoptera collection was sold in lots to meet death duties. Many entomological store boxes remain at Calke, containing uncatalogued specimens. This residue includes several boxes of valezina Silver-washed Fritillary females from the Forest, making one wonder just how many valezina females a man actually needs.
All this troubled the Hon. Gerald Lascelles, Deputy Surveyor (senior Crown officer), who published his memoirs in a book entitled Thirty Years in the New Forest. But Lascelles was heavily outnumbered, and effectively powerless. Even his keepers ignored his instructions.
Of course this Elysium could not last. A generation of collectors was lost to the First World War, along with cohorts of Forest trees. Then, the sleepy old Office of Woods, which had administered the Forest for the Crown, was replaced by the Forestry Commission, a new organisation geared to economic forestry using fast-growing and largely non-native conifers. The war fellings were accepted by the collectors as a necessary evil, not least because several of the fritillary butterflies thrived in the resultant clearings and young plantations, but the Forestry Commission changed the feel of the place greatly and became instantly disliked by collectors and naturalists alike. One collector bemoaned, ‘The Forest generally appears to be well on the way to becoming a second Black Forest of pines.’ The Second World War changed the character of the Forest woods further, and indeed of the open Forest. The writing was on the wall – a silvicultural revolution was in full swing.
Matters steadily worsened during the decades after the war. Coniferisation became rampant, the ride-edge shrub zone – so crucial to butterflies – was systematically obliterated, and after 1965 commoners’ ponies and cattle were finally allowed into most inclosures, to the great detriment of the ground flora. In many parts of the Forest deer numbers rose astronomically, which led to Fallow Deer browsing out the White Admiral's Honeysuckle. By 1970 more than 60 per cent of the inclosures were under conifers. It then became apparent that the Commission planned to reduce broad-leaved woodland to mere cosmetic fringes around pure conifer plantations. In the ensuing row the Minister of Agriculture issued a moratorium prohibiting further fellings of broad-leaved woodland. That moratorium, known as the Minister's Mandate, is still in place today. Ironically, it led to the decline of the ‘spring fritillaries’ – by cutting off the supply of clearings from broad-leaved woodland on which they had become strongly dependent.
Today, many of the New Forest inclosures consist of anodyne plantations of non-native conifers, through which the wind soughs vacantly. We are told that William the Conqueror, who founded the New Forest, would recognise today's Forest. He would not, and neither would the old butterfly collectors, due to the gross intrusions of the twentieth-century silvicultural revolution, of which the Forest's woodland butterflies were unscheduled victims. In places there are narrow vistas back into history. Pondhead Inclosure, to the immediate south-east of Lyndhurst, is perhaps the best relic of the New Forest inclosures of old. Outside the silvicultural inclosures – which were admittedly started for silviculture – elements of the old Forest are still recognisable, notably the ancient pasture-woodlands such as those at Mark Ash and Pinnick Wood, and vistas across the ancient heathland, both dry and wet. But it is hard to wander anywhere in today's New Forest without hearing the sound of traffic, at least distantly, especially when the leaves are off. And everywhere, against the skyline, near and far, stand sullied ranks of sombre, brooding alien conifers. On the eastern skyline glows the towering beacon of the Fawley oil refinery.
Much l
audable heathland restoration work has been carried out by the Forestry Commission over the last two decades – restoring bogs that had been partly drained in order to provide better grazing land, removing invasive Rhododendron and, at places such as Highland Water, removing some of the more modern conifer plantations to restore open heathland. Better still, from the narrow point of view of the woodland butterflies, since the mid-1990s commoners’ stock (ponies and cattle) have again been excluded from most of the enclosed woods and the fences reinstated. Habitat conditions have improved dramatically for some butterflies following the removal of commoners’ stock, notably for long-grass species such as the Ringlet which had become a rarity, but in many of the woods flowering bramble patches are scarce and few Honeysuckle tangles exist for the White Admiral. The latter, for so long one of the Forest's most ubiquitous butterflies, is now decidedly scarce here in its former national stronghold, on account of deer browsing and because forestry thinning works have acted heavily against it. Mercifully, the Silver-washed Fritillary, with which it flew in close companionship, remains reasonably well established in many inclosures, though nowhere is it remotely as profuse as it once was. Var. valezina, as the old collectors knew the beautiful fulvous-green colour form of the female, still occurs – sparingly.
Recently, the fortunes of the Pearl-bordered Fritillary have turned round wondrously in its traditional heartland north-east of Brockenhurst, where it became very scarce during the 1980s. There, this nationally rare springtime butterfly has resurged spectacularly as a result of ride widening work and the felling of some large blocks of conifers. Its congener, the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, which was always a butterfly of damp hollows in the New Forest, is still hanging on, mainly in the Forest's south-west sector, both inside some of the inclosures there and along stream sides in the open heath. Formerly, though, it was far more widespread. The third of the ‘spring fritillaries’, the Duke of Burgundy, appears to be extinct in the Forest – the intrusion of ponies into its favoured inclosures probably proved too much for it – but it is a tenacious little butterfly, capable of pulling off surprises. The Dark Green Fritillary has increased somewhat of late, at least on the open heaths and in some of the inclosures between Brockenhurst and Beaulieu. Best of all, the Purple Emperor has made a most welcome return to the fringes of the Forest, albeit at low population density. The golden High Brown Fritillary, sadly, is almost certainly extinct. I have the melancholy privilege of having seen the last of the New Forest High Browns, back in 1992. Outside the woods, the drier heaths are currently just a little too heavily grazed for most butterfly species, though Grayling and Silver-studded Blue colonies are plentiful enough.
But forests can restore themselves, though they function over longer timescales than we do, and butterflies are tougher than we sometimes think. Despite everything, the New Forest inclosures remain of realisable potential for many of our butterfly species, whilst the open heaths and pasture-woodlands merely require a drop in grazing pressure for butterfly populations to increase spectacularly. This will occur in time. Time creates difficulties, and time alone will solve them; it is merely a matter of how we work with time. In time, lovers of our butterflies may return to their New Forest heartland.
20 Summer of the Painted Lady
Freezing rain is a rare phenomenon, and at New Year it is both rare and inauspicious. Nonetheless, that is how 1996 began. December had been cold and, after a brief mild and wet spell, January and then February followed suit. Cold easterly winds dominated, bringing snowfalls to the north and east, a few of which crept towards the west. The first reasonable day of the year, at least in the Cotswolds, was February 27th, which brought out the first bumblebees and Marsh Fritillary larvae at Strawberry Banks, near Stroud. The following day the first butterfly appeared, a Small Tortoiseshell basking upside down on a wall in Cirencester, though the temperature did not feel quite warm enough. Butterflies often appear earlier in the year in towns than in the countryside, simply because of the extra warmth issuing from heated buildings.
The year's first proper butterfly was a male Red Admiral, patrolling a hilltop territory at the old Large Blue site near Buckfastleigh in south Devon, the infamous Site X. It was flying in the glade that contained the Large Blue warden's dilapidated caravan and may even have overwintered therein, alongside various Field Mice, beetles, spiders, slime moulds and other esoteric biodiversity – and the previous August's washing-up. Think of the most disgusting domestic mess you have ever encountered, double it, multiply that by pi r squared, stick it in a white caravan turned green with age and algae and you've got the Large Blue warden's caravan. But that splendid and deeply memorable Red Admiral was a foretaste of what was to come. Oh, and by the way, the Large Blue site had been seriously over-grazed by Farmer Brown's cattle, again.
Thereafter March was cold and sunless, but reasonably dry. Hardly a butterfly showed. Winter would not let go. Chiffchaffs were only just starting to arrive on the south Devon coast at the end of March. April did not burst through, offering only a handful of warm days. It was not until almost the end of the month that the first Orange-tip was seen, a fresh male dancing over a roadside patch of Lady's Smock on the edge of Meathop Moss, in south Cumbria. On the moss itself the Green Hairstreak was only just starting, in contrast to the abundance noted there on April 24th 1993. Up on the nearby limestone hills the Blue Moor-grass had been severely scorched by frost and lying snow, and was straw-coloured, whereas this is normally one of the earliest of our native grasses to flush green. The north had clearly had it tough. A group of us up there for a Butterfly Conservation seminar thought about going out to look for the nocturnal larvae of the Scotch Argus, then realised the idea was daft and retreated to the pub instead.
It would be pleasing to say that May redeemed the situation, but it was the second coldest May of the century, after 1902. Frosts were a prominent feature well into the month. It was, though, like the preceding months, distinctly dry. Pearl-bordered Fritillaries, somehow, emerged with a bang mid-month in Ashclyst Forest, north-east of Exeter, and over Bracken stands in the steep gorge-like valley by Castle Drogo, on the north edge of Dartmoor. The late May period, normally a peak time of year for our early-season butterflies, then became stuck in a rut.
Unexpectedly, one of the most memorable dates in twentieth-century butterflying folklore dawned, Thursday May 30th 1996. It started grey, but a pale sun appeared, which burnt away the clouds of morning, and a clear afternoon materialised. Moreover, the wind was in the south, the deep south, and increased steadily, depositing a film of Sahara dust on parked cars. At Strawberry Banks the first Marsh Fritillaries appeared, along with my first Common Blue of the year – very late. At Rodborough Common the butterfly transect route was walked in full sun, for the first time that year. Nothing special was flying there but it was good to note that the Duke of Burgundy had not been entirely written off by the poor May, and that the Brown Argus was out in good numbers. Then, I retreated to the north end of Cirencester Park Woods where the Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were at last emerging, some forty of them, resplendent over Bluebell carpets which were just starting to flower properly. At 3.15 precisely, a Painted Lady appeared; it dropped out of the sky to feed on Bluebell flowers in one of the clearings. One Painted Lady does not make a summer, but sixteen do! By the end of the day I had counted that many, almost all of them dropping into the Pearl-bordered Fritillary clearings to feed on Bluebell flowers, which traced the afternoon with heady fragrance. The following day I surveyed other parts of the woods and saw another eighteen, again all looking pristine, complete with the iridescent sheen they bear when freshly emerged, and again feasting avidly on Bluebells. These were not home-grown butterflies but immigrants from way across the Channel, and they were accompanied by myriad Silver Y moths. Within the space of two days the 1996 butterfly season had metamorphosed into a veritable paradise. The Painted Lady had blasted all the doom and gloom away. Thank God I had booked those two days off!
There was no
stopping 1996 now. Thirty-six Painted Ladies were seen on June 1st, mostly on Bluebells, in Cirencester Park Woods, where they outshone the Pearl-bordered Fritillaries. Some were also seen basking in late evening light along the lanes as I took a daughter for a pony ride. They had already reached the north of Scotland. By happy chance I had a work trip to the Isle of Wight booked, to advise on conservation grazing regimes. A fresh wave of Painted Ladies hit the Island on June 5th. I saw over a hundred feasting on, and laying eggs on, thistles along the cliff top at Compton Chine. They completely outstaged and outnumbered the Glanville Fritillaries. On the way home I called in at Pondhead Inclosure, south-east of Lyndhurst in the New Forest – Lyndhurst was traffic-jammed and the Forest was calling. There again were Painted Ladies feasting on Bluebells. Other Ladies were seen along the road home, active during a warm evening. The diary recalls: The first thing I saw on crossing into Gloucestershire was a Painted Lady. That was at 8.45 pm. It had been a twelve-hour day. Diary again: Arrived home to find an empty house and a note reading ‘Millie Hospital Cirencester’. It turned out that she had broken an arm whilst being chased in the garden by an errant brother.
During the emotional days that followed, butterflying had to be rationalised. The odd cloudy, even drizzly day was actually welcome. Mercifully the Painted Ladies quickly found our garden. There was a constant stream of them heading through, northbound, on June 6th and 7th. An expedition to Bircher Common, north of Leominster in Herefordshire, on June 13th, to advise a new warden on management for the High Brown Fritillary, was memorable for the car journey: I passed 50 Painted Ladies, all heading west into Wales. They were active long into the evenings. Regular evening pony rides, with an able daughter, produced counts of up to 45 along a 5-kilometre route of quiet rural lanes. Many were basking on a hillock I christened Painted Lady Rise, which attracted them in subsequent years.
In Pursuit of Butterflies Page 27