29 It rained …
Chapter 9 of Winnie-the-Pooh begins: ‘It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old – three, was it, or four? – never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.’ One wonders what poor Piglet would have made of 2012, which was so wet and miserable it was dubbed the Year of the Slug. It was annus horribilis in extremis.
Yet it all began so promisingly, with a dry and mild winter leading into a second consecutive superb March. Then, on April 5th the Environment Agency declared much of England to be in a state of drought, as far north as south Yorkshire. Hose-pipe bans were put in place. This plus the prospect of a Royal Jubilee summer and the London Olympics to come combined to produce the first effective rain dance devised by mankind. The jet stream immediately jumped south, to produce the wettest April and the wettest April-to-June period on record. The year deteriorated further, becoming the wettest for England, and for England and Wales combined. For the UK as a whole it was the second rainiest year on record, though that dataset only goes back to 1910.
In terms of a summer, UK-wide there were eight lovely days in late May, and southern Britain enjoyed a hot and sunny week in late July, whilst the rains continued unabated up north. There was also a scatter of pleasant days during August and September, and even the odd decent weekend. But that apart, it rained and it rained and it rained. It was a record year for summer floods, and widespread flooding also occurred during the autumn and again at Christmas. The problem was that the jet stream was in the wrong place just about all year: too far north during the winter, leading to water shortages, and then too far south during the summer months – apart from in late May when the wretched thing briefly got its act together.
Dire as the year was, it was not a patch on the abominable summer of 1816, which must have been the worst recorded in Europe. It was known as the ‘year without a summer’, and was followed by two other bad summers. This trilogy of appalling summers is attributed to fall-out from the eruption of the Tambora volcano in faraway Indonesia in April 1815, the greatest volcanic eruption in recorded history. The gloom inspired Byron to write his apocalyptic poem, ‘Darkness’, quoted in Chapter 10. Widespread crop failure during the period 1816–1818 led to food riots in almost every European country. We were let off relatively lightly in 2012.
With the benefit of hindsight, the signs were ominous for 2012 from Day One, for heavy, persistent rain spread across the country during the afternoon – in stark contrast to the fine day that had been forecast. I started the year well, searching for the tiny hibernating larvae of the White Admiral in withered leaves of Honeysuckle in the Straits Inclosure of Alice Holt Forest. These hibernacula, as they are known, are leaves folded down the mid rib and spun loosely together with caterpillar silk. The tiny grey-brown caterpillar hides within. Unfortunately, White Admiral hibernacula become harder to find with age, as spotting them requires keen, young eyes. The technique is to look for folded or withered leaves dangling down from Honeysuckle stems by silk strands, by shaking the bush lightly or blowing at it, to generate movement. But then the unforecast rains arrived, and soon became tumultuous.
Things got worse. White-letter Hairstreak eggs proved almost impossible to find that winter, at least in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, even on known and trusted trees. The females prefer to place their eggs close to elm flower buds, into which the newly hatched larvae readily burrow, but the elm trees seemed to be having a year off from flowering. Even mature Wych Elms, which normally flower profusely, were bereft of flower buds. What did they know?
The wheels were coming off. At Strawberry Banks, the Marsh Fritillary population had crashed horrifically, from an estimated 25,000 larvae in March 2011 to a mere 52 twelve months later – and that paltry total was derived from four and a half hours of searching in ideal weather conditions. Only one of the eight larval webs found on the Banks in late August 2011 had survived the winter. Presumably the weather and associated environmental conditions were to blame.
The diary recalls that spring lifted off on March 10th, only I arrived late on site, having suffered tediously slow shopping at Tesco in Tetbury, mislaid glasses and an irritating visit to the bank where the automatic paying-in machine maliciously chewed up my cheque. Sometimes naturalists feel that the world is conspiring against them. But the diary continues: There was a massive take-off of bumblebees at precisely 12.10. Shortly afterwards the first butterflies appeared out of hibernation, Brimstone, Comma, Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell in that order, in one heady hour as spring broke through. Later, a Red Admiral graced the day. It seemed that winter was dead and buried.
From March 19th to 30th the weather was sublime. This proved to be the longest spell of warm sunny weather of the whole year. Later, one realised that spring and summer had swapped positions, and that Titania's warning in her ‘forgeries of jealousy’ speech in Act II scene I of A Midsummer Night's Dream was coming true. ‘The seasons alter,’ she states, ‘The spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which.’ Even in Shakespeare's day the weather periodically lost the plot, but in 2012 it really lost it.
I narrowly failed to find Duke of Burgundy out in March, though Green Hairstreak proved to be well out at Rodborough Common on the 28th, the earliest I had recorded it there in twenty years. By the end of the month I had chalked up twelve species, a personal record for March, and could have managed one or two more. The most amazing record, though, was of Small Blues flying on the Isle of Wight on the 30th, five or six weeks earlier than usual.
Then Easter arrived early, which always tempts providence – and, sure enough, the weather collapsed. Snow fell in northern Britain on April 4th, Maundy Thursday, and the month became cold and increasingly wet, ending with over a hundred flood warnings in force. But April could be forgiven, as it had put on a definitive performance back in 2011, so we were due a poor one.
But May can hardly be forgiven. It was wet and cold – until it suddenly produced ten superb days late on. Those ten days were well used by the spring butterflies, and saved many a small colony from dying out. In Cirencester Park Woods the Pearl-bordered Fritillaries emerged in surprisingly good numbers, doubtless because the fine March had benefited the larvae and also because the adults managed to hold back from emerging until fine weather arrived. They wandered through almost every clearing in that extensive network of woods, and spread out onto limestone grassland slopes around Stroud, seemingly by using the railway line as a corridor. And, miracle of miracles, the Strawberry Banks Marsh Fritillaries made it through! Several of the 52 larvae found there in early March managed to emerge as butterflies, appearing first on May 23rd. I counted a dizzy nine there on the 26th. They had a mere eight days to make a go of things, before the Diamond Jubilee rains began.
At the start of June I was in a realistic, evidence-based mood:
Diary, June 1st 2012: I have absolutely no confidence in this month whatsoever. The history of coronation and royal jubilee weather in this country is nothing short of appalling and, right on cue, a nasty little depression is set to sit on top of us. I still have nightmares about the Silver Jubilee rains of 1977, and this show's a Diamond Jubilee. The horror. The horror.
Those fears were well grounded. The long Diamond Jubilee weekend suffered foul and abusive weather throughout, which was most unfair on Her Majesty. The Diamond Jubilee rains were followed by a fully fledged gale on the 7th and 8th, as the wettest June in the full UK dataset unveiled its horrors. It was also the second dullest June on record, after that of 1987. Incredibly, the far north-west of Scotland enjoyed relatively dry weather, which indicates just how far south the jet stream had jumped. Down south, there were seven reasonable days, mainly at the end of the month. The diary concludes, All other days were Vile. I don't want a June next year.
Yet some butterflies managed to do all right during the miserable June o
f 2012, notably our most neurotic aristocrat, the Large Blue. Somehow, it emerged in pleasing numbers at Collard Hill, in the Somerset Polden Hills, and made the most of the scatter of good days that occurred during the second half of June. This was all the more remarkable as the grass was far too long for it on the site. The problem was that the grass failed to grow during the dry March, necessitating the removal of the cattle, for there was no keep left on the slope for them. Then, as soon as the cattle had been taken off, the rains arrived and the grass grew madly, and it proved difficult to bring the cattle back. When I visited on June 17th Large Blue was the commonest butterfly on the site, not because it was genuinely numerous, but because all other species were in disappointingly low numbers. The Large Blue had been safely underground, as larvae and pupae, in ant nests during the worst of the weather. The poor midsummer weather seemed to spur it on, for it laid an impressive number of eggs.
The fine end to May meant that the high-summer butterflies were emerging on time, as their larvae had grown rapidly during warm weather then. The handsome White Admiral was even appearing in good numbers, at least in Alice Holt Forest, where they skimmed the woodland rides three or four at a time. And it was Emperor time again. Nationally, the first was seen at Bookham Common, Surrey, on June 28th, by Ken Willmott, whose duty it is to welcome the first Emperor of the year. My own appeared in most inauspicious circumstances, in Alice Holt on July 5th: I was being savagely barked at by a brace of bad-mannered dogs owned by an unapologetic man. That could not augur well.
On July 19th Neil Hulme and I recorded a programme on our passion for the Purple Emperor, with Brett Westwood, as part of a short series for Radio 4 under the intriguing title of In Pursuit of the Ridiculous. The series examined some of the strange natural history passions that individual devotees suffer – my colleague Andy Foster's irrational quest for a rare and totally obscure water beetle, a lady obsessed by slugs, whether it matters if rare orchids hybridise themselves out of existence or not, the virtues and vices of bird twitching and, of course, the Purple Emperor and the Sukebind. Hulme and Oates both came out wondrously during that final programme, openly confessing that the dimension this butterfly transports us to, in season, is actually the real world, and that the dimension we spend most of our lives in is an artificial construct. We also discussed what butterfly people are actually seeking, and the importance of heartlands, places of deep belonging. The Emperor loves to show off, of course, and duly put on a stupendous performance, not realising it was only radio. We even saw seven males together in a vista, a courting pair disappear into an oak tree together, and a terrified Nuthatch being pursued by an irate male. At the height of all this mayhem, a well-known lady butterfly enthusiast – named here only as ‘P’ – arrived, wearing a T-shirt embossed with large, brazen Swallowtails. She should have known better. ‘Take it off!’ we shouted at her, but too late. Insulted, the Emperors immediately stopped flying and hung up in the oak tops, until the lady covered up the offending garment, having declined the alternative.
It was time to visit Fermyn Woods, though not until after what turned out to be my last ever visit to Kingcombe, to run a butterflying weekend for a dozen needy souls. After a nightmare journey, when every road leading towards west Dorset proved almost impassable, I arrived to find that the place had run out of cake. Nothing could be more ominous, short of Ravens deserting the Tower of London. An evening walk around nearby meadows revealed a full-grown Peacock larva wandering off to pupate, 17 metres from the nettle patch where it and others had been feeding – quite a journey for a caterpillar some 4 centimetres long, assuming it had travelled in a straight line, which is unlikely. We also found an inter-species pairing, for a randy male Meadow Brown was mating with a freshly emerged Ringlet, mercifully a female. I must have seen a dozen or so similar occurrences over the years, mainly involving Meadow Browns. It is thought that any resultant eggs would be infertile.
On Sunday July 22nd the sun broke through, as an anticyclone at last moved in. Three species of Hairstreak were seen flying at Butterfly Conservation's delightful Alners Gorse reserve, a mosaic of scrub and old meadowland near King's Stag in north Dorset. For decades it was common land, where the local poor could gather gorse for winter fodder and fuel, for the stems burn hot and well and are good for bread making. Now it cares for poor and needy butterfly enthusiasts. Purple and White-letter Hairstreaks were joined by the first Brown Hairstreak of the year, which flew brazenly round a group of us. These three are rarely seen flying together – I had only managed it twice before, long ago at Noar Hill, and here at Alners Gorse in 2005.
That evening I left the paradise that is the Kingcombe valley in golden light that already seemed autumnal. The valley was alive and throbbing, but the Centre had seemingly lost itself – and me, for I never heard from it again. The truth is that our relationships with places can suddenly and inexplicably end, often just by accident. Perhaps it is natural.
The following day Fermyn Woods killed the fatted calf for me. Somehow I managed to drive through the first wood without disturbing any butterfly photographers, at 9.40 am, Emperor breakfast time, en route to staying again at Sudborough Green Lodge cottages. But beneath the line of poplars in Lady Wood Head I was stopped, dead, by a huge black butterfly descending to the ride some 75 metres ahead. It was obviously iris, and one sporting little if any white. The car door flew open, camera and binoculars were grabbed; then I had to freeze as the mighty insect flew towards me, and settled on the car number plate. At that moment my car, humbly known as LC61 YHE, became officially Blessed – at least as far as the Purple Emperor website was concerned. At that point I realised the vision was a pristine female. She soon settled to feed on the ride for ten minutes before a crowd started to gather, and frightened her off. She ascended to a nearby sallow tree, where she sat for precisely 42 minutes, wings closed, before suddenly making off at speed, up and away. She proved to be a standard ab. lugenda, possessing a few small white dots near her forewing upperside tips but lacking the typical bold white bands. She was seen again, nearby and briefly, at 12.41, laying eggs high up in the sub-canopy of a tall hybrid sallow. The vision haunts me still, and rightly so.
She was not the only Purple Emperor aberration seen that day, for a pristine male ab. iolata (formerly known as ab. semi-iole) appeared an hour later, settling briefly to feed along the East Ride before deciding to go off and search the sallows for females in need of male attention. Luckily, Doug Goddard photographed him before he was claimed by that pressing engagement.
The following day two other aberrant Purple Emperors were seen in Fermyn Woods, though not by me. This was the year in which the Purple Emperor varied: five distinct individuals were photographed in Fermyn Woods, and two others were reported from other districts. Why these aberrations appeared in one of the poorest butterfly years known is one of the many mysteries of butterflying. I was driving north, to visit Northumberland on business, stopping off at the Trowell service station on the M1 where a female White-letter Hairstreak was meandering blissfully over parked cars. ‘Hello, Precious,’ I said, much to the surprise of a family eating ice cream. In Yorkshire I drove into cloud, which persisted throughout my visit to northern England, whilst the south baked for a few precious days. Rothbury, in Northumberland, proved to be a hapless little town, bestialised by lorries that thundered through it all night, oblivious of its speed restrictions. Sleep evaded me, for my soul had been left behind in Fermyn Woods. What was I missing out on?
Northumberland, half-wild, empty, blessed by dark skies at night, and above all tranquil, was a veritable bog. But its bog-land butterfly, the Large Heath, was finishing a miserable season, having been all but washed away by persistent rains on the exposed blanket bogs it inhabits here. On the edge of Steng Moss, near Wallington, one of the best of the 158 Large Heath sites that Northumberland entomologist Harry Eales has surveyed, hangs a scarecrow man on an ancient gibbet, twisting and turning in the westing wind. It is called Winter's Gibbet, only Winter was n
ot hanging there, Summer was. The mummy's gyrations seemed to summarise the entire summer. Yet strangely, I fell in love – again.
This was my first proper visit to Northumberland, and even in the direst of summers I fell under its spell, especially that of the brooding moors around Wallington. Here you can hear the Curlew call, and yourself think. Poetry could be written there, or even a novel, unhindered. I was there, at the birth of a new heartland. Part of me remained behind as I meandered the long, lonely Roman road that runs along Hadrian's Wall. This is one of the most enchanting roads in Britain, where driving is still a pleasure. It is probably wrong to travel the most magical stretch, from Walwick to Greenhead, without an archaeologist. Romans are everywhere – forts, turrets, a temple of Mithras and an ever-straight vallum (a fortified ditch). At any moment one could be ambushed by gerunds or gerundives. It is reputed to have been the worst posting in the Roman Empire, after Hardknott Fort over in Mountain Ringlet country in the western Lake District.
Eventually the Roman road ran out, and dumped me on the A69 (T) in the wake of a convoy of filthy lorries heading for the M6. They turned north, I turned south to visit Arnside Knott and its associated hills. It was late July, and the season was already ending. The trees were starting to turn, such had been the rains. The Olympics were starting, which meant the weather would surely pick up – as the entire population would be indoors watching TV – but it didn't. I fell asleep before the opening ceremony began on my hotel TV, having travelled 1600 kilometres (1000 miles) and seen 38 species of butterfly flying in a week (plus five other species found as immature stages). Only one of them had impressed, the Emperor, who had chosen this of all years to produce a number of acute colour forms – and claim Butterfly of the Year, uncontested.
In Pursuit of Butterflies Page 42