Butterflies and London Wasps



The essence of summer - Clouded Yellows




An "ordinary" Silver Washed Butterfly



I SAW MY FIRST CLOUDED YELLOW OF THE YEAR  TODAY – ALWAYS SUCH A SYMBOL OF HIGH SUMMER – A STRIKING ORANGEY YELLOW BUTTERFLY THAT WILL HAVE CROSSED OVER THE CHANNEL FROM FRANCE. THIS ONE, IN NEED OF A QUICK BOOSTER OF NECTAR TO FILL ITS TANK SO THAT IT COULD CONTINUE ON ITS WAY, STOPPED TO IMBIBE ON A PALE BLUISH PINK SCABIOUS FLOWER, GROWING ALONGSIDE THE LANE THAT PASSES MY HOUSE.

A LITTLE LATER ON DURING THE SAME MORNING WALK WITH MY LURCHER ROSIE, WE WALKED BACK THROUGH THE WOODLANDS AND I WAS DELIGHTED TO SEE SO MANY BUTTERFLIES INCLUDING GATEKEEPERS, RINGLETS, MEADOW BROWNS, PEACOCKS, RED ADMIRALS, SMALL TORTOISESHELLS, BRIMSTONES AND LOTS OF SILVER-WASHED FRITILLARIES. IT APPEARS TO BE ANOTHER GOOD YEAR FOR BUTTERFLIES!

AMONGST THESE SILVER-WASHED FRITILLARIES WAS A DARK “VALENZENA” FORM WHICH OCCURS IN A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF FEMALES, PRIMARILY IN THE LARGER COLONIES IN THE SOUTH OF ENGLAND, WHERE THE ORANGE-BROWN COLOURING IS REPLACED WITH A DEEP OLIVE-GREEN. THE LEGENDARY LEPIDOPTERIST, FREDERICK WILLIAM FROHAWK, WAS SO TAKEN WITH THIS FORM, THAT HE NAMED HIS ONLY DAUGHTER AFTER IT.

YOU NEED TO BE CAREFUL NAMING A CHILD OF YOURS AFTER  A BUTTERFLY - MRS ELEANOR GLANVILLE, A BUTTERFLY ENTHUSIAST OF THE LATE 17TH/EARLY 18TH CENTURY NAMED A FRITILLARY AFTER HERSELF – THE GLANVILLE FRITILLARY – ONLY TO HAVE HER WILL CONTESTED ON THE GROUNDS THAT “NOBODY OF SOUND MIND WOULD HAVE SUCH A HOBBY!"

ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SUBJECT, I AM OFTEN ASKED BY PEOPLE LOOKING FOR A CAREER WORKING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE HOW THEY CAN GET A “FOOTHOLD” ON THE CAREER LADDER. WELL, IT IS ALL ABOUT PERSEVERANCE.

GOOD FRIENDS OF MINE HAVE A SON CALLED OLLIE WHO AS FAR BACK AS I CAN REMEMBER WANTED TO BE A TOP RUGBY UNION COACH (WELL HIS DAD IS A NEW ZEALANDER!) HE WENT OFF TO UNIVERSITY TO STUDY SPORT SCIENCE WERE HE ALSO PLAYED THE GAME LOTS, THEN TOOK ALL THE APPROPRIATE COURSES SO THAT HE IS NOW FULLY QUALIFIED RUGBY COACH. NOW THE DIFFICULT BIT – GET THAT INTRO TO A CLUB. HE STARTED TO KNOCK ON RUGBY CLUB DOORS, SAYING THAT HE WAS PREPARED TO DO ANYTHING TO HELP OUT.

WELL TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT, HIS DAD TOLD ME LAST NIGHT THAT HE HAS NOW GOT MINOR COACHING ROLES WITH HARLEQUINS, LONDON IRISH AND SARACENS. BUT THE REALLY EXCELLENT NEWS IS THAT HE HAS BEEN OFFERED THE POSITION OF COACH TO THE LONDON WASPS LADIES TEAM – AN EXTREMELY STRONG SIDE THAT CURRENTLY CONTAINS 6 INTERNATIONALS! HE HAS REPORTED BACK THAT THEY TRAIN EXCEPTIONALLY HARD.

AT HIS VERY FIRST SESSION HE INTRODUCED CATCHING PARTLY BOILED CHICKEN EGGS – SHOWING THAT YOU NEED TO CATCH THE “BALL” WITH CARE. THIS WENT DOWN A STORM AND THE GIRLS LOVED HIS FIRST INNOVATIVE COACHING SESSION. THE ONLY PROBLEM IS THAT HE HAS OF COURSE NOW GOT THE NICKNAME OF “BOILED EGG!!” SO RUGBY!

BUT IT IS SUCH A GOOD LESSON FOR ALL THOSE WHO WANT TO GET INTO A PARTICULAR FIELD – WHATEVER THAT MAY BE. GET QUALIFIED, BE TOTALLY POSITIVE, TURN UP AND BE A PLEASANT NUISANCE OFFERING TO DO ANYTHING. THE DOORS WILL EVENTUALLY START TO OPEN.

IT WOULD NOT SURPRISE ME ONE JOT IF YOUNG OLLIE BECAME THE ENGLAND NATIONAL COACH ONE DAY. OR ON SECOND THOUGHTS, MAYBE THE NEW ZEALAND COACH – HMMM.    




A "Valenzina" Silver Washed Butterfly

 

Strange Small Tortoiseshell sorted!

Looks as though he got a chill when he was but a mere youngster!

Since my blog back on the 23rd of September on a strange looking Small Tortoiseshell butterfly, I have been digging around for a little more information on this. I contacted my good friend Dan Hoare of Butterfly Conservation as he is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to butterflies (and most other wildlife!) and he told me the following:

The Small Tortoiseshell appears to be particularly sensitive to temperature shock, so that extreme shocks of either heat or cold during the last 24 hours of the larval stage and the first 48 hours of the pupal stage, can disrupt the natural process of metamorphosis and inhibit the normal processes in which organic chemicals create the colouration of the wing scales.
 

It is difficult to ascertain how frequently any of these aberrations occur in the wild, however it is a rare event that exposes the newly formed pupa or transitional larva to the necessary conditions for metamorphosis to be disrupted in this way, and this is supported by the paucity of historical sightings – especially of the extreme aberrations in the wild. This particular butterfly is known as a “partial aberration” – the really extreme aberration can be an almost entirely melanistic black.
 

It has been speculated that severe late frosts could possibly cause instances of these aberrant forms, as well as a larva/pupa being exposed to particularly strong sunlight after having the normally sheltered pupation site disturbed in some manner.

So thanks Dan – fascinating stuff which I thought I would share!

http://butterfly-conservation.org/

A Small Tortoiseshell - but not as we know it!

A Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly with a difference!

A normal Small Tortoiseshell butterfly

I came across this Small Tortoiseshell butterfly (top photo) the other day with very odd markings – you can see in the photos that it has large amounts of black along the top of its wings when compared to a “normal” Tortoiseshell below. I will try and find out how rare this actually is and report back – just because I haven’t seen the like before, doesn't mean it is frantically unusual!!
 

I am pleased to read that it has generally been an excellent summer for butterflies, with long warm sunny periods, resulting in lots of butterflies being recorded. I wrote on this blog back on the 30^th March, that although the summer of 2012 was an awful year for most butterflies, it was probably not the disaster that the press would have us all believe – butterflies and many other insect species are renowned for boom and bust years. I do feel that we are far too quick to “sensationalise” reports on the countryside – we really should keep our powder dry, so that when we REALLY do have a problem, the public don’t just think – “here we go once more, probably wolf, wolf again”.
 

I repeat, as I did back in March that this piece is not a dig at the excellent organisation Butterfly Conservation, but more of an observation on our great British press, who only ever seem to create reports on the “astounding”, making even relatively ordinary reports look dramatic by carefully selecting certain lines and “sexing” them up into eye catching headlines.
 

Read more on this “butterfly summer” on the Butterfly Conservation website:

http://butterfly-conservation.org/48-4480/hot-summer-helps-butterflies-bounce-back.html

   

A spash of summer yellow clears the clouds.

I was working near Chichester in Sussex yesterday, on Lordington farm run by Andrew Elms. This is a Conservation Grade (CG) farm and I was doing a habitat assessment for CG to make sure that Andrew is meeting the strict criteria laid down by the Grade and where appropriate, giving advice to help improve these habitats even further.

Lordington is situated in a attractive part of the South Downs and to be quite honest, it would be difficult to have classified this as “work” - walking around this delightful farm on a beautiful summer’s day!  

Part of Andrew’s business is growing Lordington Lavender, much of which has now been harvested to be made into the oils, soaps and creams that are so sort after, creating a vibrant business. Luckily for me, Andrew had left 3 strips un-harvested for the wildlife to enjoy, and enjoy it they did! The strips were covered in all sorts of different butterflies and bees, including the first two Clouded yellow butterflies I have seen this year.    

   The Clouded Yellow is primarily an immigrant to the UK, originating from North Africa and southern Europe, with numbers varying greatly from year to year. It is amazing to think that this species, like a number of others such as the Painted Lady butterfly, have crossed the channel to lay their eggs here with us on plants such as Clovers, Lucerne and Bird’s foot trefoil.

I have put some photos onto here so you can see for yourselves what beautiful splashes of summer they are!

A stunning Clouded Yellow Butterfly

Two clouded yellow - more than enough to make my day!

The future is orange!

A male orange tip butterfly

I watched an orange- tip butterfly today, laying her eggs on the caterpillar food plant - Hedge Garlic (they will also commonly use Lady’s Smock or garden grown Honesty) She was careful it seemed to lay only one egg on each individual plant, placing each miniscule, slightly yellowish capsule either on the plant’s stem just below the white flower head or tucked away under one of the leaves. This seemed a good tactic, as one of the plants she chose was growing in the middle of a farm track and would be at high risk of being crushed by farm machinery. However, most were growing adjacent to the field boundary – hence a country name for Hedge Garlic being “Jack-by-the-hedge”!!

The eggs will soon hatch and the caterpillars will feed voraciously on the plant before pupating towards the end of July. There it will stay until the warm spring sun in April or May of next year entices it from its chrysalis, to once again fly down the same country track as generation after generation has done before. I felt rather privileged to witness the start of this brand new cycle.

Incidentally – it is only the male that has the orange tipped wings!  

2012 - a disaster for butterflies



Chalk hill blue

Another report recently published by the excellent organisation Butterfly Conservation has shown just how bad last summer was (as if we needed reminding!) for our wildlife in general, and in this case particularly butterflies. Eye catching statistics such as “one of the UK’s rarest butterflies the black hairstreak saw its numbers fall by 98% and the white-letter hairstreak fell by 72%”.  The report goes on "Despite the horrific weather in 2012 over 1,500 dedicated volunteers still managed to collect data from over a thousand sites across the UK. Their amazing efforts enable us to assess the impacts of wet summers on butterfly diversity." I admit that the report did also say that one or two species did buck the trend such as the meadow brown which was up in numbers from the previous year.

However, this all resulted in newspaper headlines such as “Butterflies suffer devastating year after UK’s wet summer” and “Disaster year for butterflies”. You have to admit, a 98% decline in a species in just one year does sound pretty appalling – but is it? The last dreadful year similar to 2012 was 1976, which ironically was caused by drought. So, were butterfly numbers permanently affected following this drought? No, not really.

The importance of these surveys are to gauge long term trends, which does show that many butterfly and moth species are in fact declining which is worrying and an important story to tell. The fact that populations jump up and down in number from year to year, depending on a wide range of reasons, is of course interesting too, but this has been ever thus and should be treated accordingly. Of course for some of our very rare species, an awful breeding season could be the final nail in the coffin, but for most it is just a bad year and no more than that. We need to be careful that all we ever read in the press is more and more depressing news as far as the countryside is concerned.

The summer of 2012 was in fact an incredible summer for the chalkhill blue in parts of the south of England. Phenomenal numbers emerged on some areas of the South Downs at the beginning of August, in scenes seldom witnessed since Victorian times. On one particular place near Eastbourne for instance, a conservative estimate for the whole site reckoned there to be around 820,000 chalk hill blues, which in certain favoured places were recorded at a density of up to 33 per square metre!!

Not much mention of this in the press.