Church bells reverberated off the houses and chimney smoke drifted low across Selborne High Street as I cycled up to see in the New Year on Noar Hill. Then, at midnight, a host of burgundy-coloured rockets ascended from a nearby farmstead. Meanwhile, down near Winchester the year's first conservation drama was being played out: a landowner needed to enlarge his farm by an extra ten acres in order to qualify for an EU grant towards a new grain store, only to find that the grant stream was terminated as he finished grubbing out a rather good Duke of Burgundy colony. Please do not think that these were halcyon days: Hampshire was a battlefield, with woods, hedges, marshes and downs disappearing under buildings or agricultural intensification.
Snow descended in early January 1985, primarily on Kent and East Anglia but reaching as far west as Wiltshire. The fallen snow promptly turned to ice and was added to by further falls during a sixteen-day spell in which the temperature scarcely reached zero. At The Lodge, we retreated into one room, heated by a small wood burner. Habitually, we took the battery out of our Morris Minor overnight and kept it in the house. January 16th was London's coldest day for thirty years. The following day the thermometer peaked at –5°C, and the South-west was subjected to a blizzard which buried Cornwall. In the midst of this chaos the year's first butterflying expedition was launched, to search for White-letter Hairstreak eggs at my study site at Blacknest, near Alice Holt Forest. The previous year had been an excellent one for this tiny treetop butterfly, and the egg lay was prolific, even if one's toes and fingers took a long time to thaw out. A rapid thaw kicked in but the land promptly became saturated and rivers flooded. At the end of January there was even a vestige of a dawn chorus. Diary: A Song Thrush with a sore throat, a couple of sparrows and something unrecognisably out of tune.
A second heavy fall of snow descended on February 9th, covering each twig with 5 centimetres of crystallised snow. On Noar Hill, the Yews and Junipers were weighted way down, some broke; and the sheep had to be dug out of a drift and fed hay. Then, whipped up by an easting wind, the snow blew into the lanes, cutting villages off. Snow ploughs came through, and turned road surfaces into ice rinks, as salt and grit were limited commodities in that era. For eleven days the temperature struggled to reach zero, though the sun shone effortlessly. Then, towards the end of the month, the weather improved, enabling the first butterflies of the year to take to the air on February 24th. Hampshire Conservation Volunteers were working with me on Noar Hill that day, cutting scrub in the Top Pit, the Holy of Holies up against the Beech woodland. My first butterfly of the year was a male Brimstone, which (diary) danced right up to me out of the sun in exactly the same spot as where the first butterfly of 1984 had been seen. Could history repeat itself, in the form of a replicate summer? Later that day, a Small Tortoiseshell came out to play, and a few days on, a Red Admiral appeared, having miraculously hibernated. The year was up and away, and winter was forgotten – only to return with a vengeance in mid-March, as two further snowfalls occurred, including one on the first day of spring, March 21st. Spring was now running late, and running scared.
March ended wet, then April roared in on a south-west wind. Incredibly, that wind ushered in an immigration of Painted Ladies. A great number were seen on the South Devon coast. By mid-April more Painted Ladies had been seen in Hampshire than during the whole of 1984. I saw my year's first in Dorset on April 8th, a small grey male along a ride at Lydlinch Common, near Sturminster Newton. By the 10th they had reached the north of England. On the 14th I saw one in Selborne High Street and three on Shoulder of Mutton, the hillside dedicated to Edward Thomas above Steep.
I drove over to the Cotswolds, on a Duke of Burgundy fact-finding tour, by way of Oxford and Bernwood Forest. In Bernwood the Pearl-bordered Fritillary was responding well to recent ride widening and coppicing work at ride junctions – Caroline Steel and I found larvae along a ditch margin in York Wood. But this apparent panacea proved to be short-lived, for coarse grasses soon took over in these opened areas and choked out the butterfly. That was the last Caroline and I ever saw of this illustrious spring butterfly in Bernwood, despite laudable conservation effort. By no means everything that is done in the name of conservation works, or if it works it works only for a while, as in this case. Deer numbers rapidly increased in Bernwood, and their browsing rendered the forest even more unsuitable.
The Cotswolds were interesting, for here the Duke of Burgundy had experienced a boom era after the Rabbits succumbed to myxomatosis and tall grasses and scrub grew up. The poor Large Blue and Adonis Blue died out, though for a couple of decades or so His Grace thrived in their stead. But by the mid-1980s the vegetation on neglected Cotswold grasslands was becoming too coarse even for this long-sward specialist, though some large colonies still survived. At all these rough grassland sites, Dark Green Fritillary and Small Blue occurred in numbers. Also, the Marsh Fritillary had enjoyed a major expansion phase, and was present on many grassland slopes in the southern Cotswolds. Soon afterwards, it retreated during a run of poor summers.
At last spring broke through, and the first Orange-tips and Green-veined Whites took to the wing, on April 22nd. They were late. Painted Ladies were still batting about, but nights had become cold and spring was stalling. At Noar Hill, the first Duke of Burgundies and Dingy Skippers emerged, and promptly squabbled. I was determined to look for emerging Duke of Burgundies in order to find the empty pupal cases. The trick worked, for a recently vacated pupal case was found 5 centimetres above ground level amongst a thick matt of dead grass. Later I found another amongst deep moss, again 5 centimetres above ground. These findings were crucial, as the insect spends at least nine months in the pupal stage, and we need to know just where the pupae occur. At this point, two weeks of dry (but cold) weather ended in rain, and the weathermen kindly pointed out that the country had just suffered eleven sunless Saturdays in a row. Gloom descended, day after day of it, and at the height of the Duke of Burgundy flight season. But one huge colony was discovered, on a rough grassland slope near the curiously named village of Vernham Dean in the extreme north-west of Hampshire. Here, I counted 85 in less than an hour. It doesn't need to be a rare butterfly, and didn't used to be.
May ended well, though the spring species had been decimated by diverse forms of adverse weather. One surprise was in store, on Noar Hill:
Diary, May 29th 1985: A colossal Large Tortoiseshell buzzed me at 3.25, in the north-west corner. I suspect it was a wild insect, rather than a bred-and-released specimen, on account of its size (bred specimens are almost invariably undersized) and behaviour – it beat me up then glided away majestically. An amazing beast – I'm sure it is resident (just) in this area.
But that was the last Large Tortoiseshell recorded in the East Hampshire Hangers. Two days later a Pearl-bordered Fritillary sauntered through the reserve, and a week afterwards a Marsh Fritillary, probably a wanderer from the introduced colony at Conford, to the north-east. Such were the riches of the Selborne area in that golden, now bygone and almost forgotten era.
Flaming June came in, ablaze, then descended into darkness. One of the tasks that unmerry month was to show a party of American butterfly enthusiasts, from the Xerces Society, around butterfly sites in Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. An eclectic group, under the leadership of beer-loving biologist Robert M Pyle, they visited Noar Hill where it rained heavily, Old Winchester Hill NNR where they saw a paltry few Adonis Blues, and Compton Chine and the adjoining downs on the island. At Compton the sun shone wondrously and the Glanville Fritillary was in goodly numbers, and looked and behaved like some of the American Checkerspot butterflies. But the highlight of the trip was up on the downs. There, in a moment of inspired serendipity, I led a group of twenty Americans laden with cameras through a gap in the gorse bushes, straight in upon a hyperactive pairing of Homo sapiens. ‘Don't stop for us!’ my American visitors shouted; ‘You two have fun while you're young,’ they advised; and best of all, ‘Hold it right there! I crossed The Pond for this shot!’ It was the highlight of their trip. The rest of June was an afterthought, though I did record my latest ever Duke of Burgundy, at Noar Hill on June 26th.
July began promisingly, seeking to redeem a weather-spoilt season that was running late. In perfect weather, on July 7th, our wedding anniversary, we joined a party from Butterfly Conservation Hampshire Branch on a field visit to Porton Down, the MOD's Chemical Defence Establishment site near Salisbury. This 1458-hectare (3600-acre) expanse of chalk grassland, scrub and woodland is one of the country's top butterfly sites, boasting some 43 species, many of which occur in huge populations over vast areas of landscape. I was bowled over. Quite ineffable, I wrote in the diary. It was the scale there that was so impressive.
Diary, July 7th 1985: The day belonged to the Dark Green Fritillary which was omni-present and omnipotent. We must have seen thousands, and it was hard to go a minute without seeing at least one. Regularly we saw, five, six or seven together. Mostly males quartering low over the ground in search of emerging females, but also some egg-laying females around the numerous Hairy Violet patches.
Above all, Porton illustrates the scale of what we have lost in this country, where quality butterfly habitats are reduced to fragments hither and thither. It also demonstrates the value of large-scale habitat mosaics.
In mid-July Mrs O and I set off up north for what was to be the highlight of the butterfly season, a ten-day survey of butterfly sites on the North York Moors, concentrating on the Duke of Burgundy. If the weather was indifferent down south it was positively vile in Yorkshire. That did not matter too much, as for the bulk of the time we were searching for the distinctive larval feeding damage on Primula leaves. His Grace was in trouble up here, struggling with issues of neglect and abandonment, heavy Rabbit and sheep grazing, and coniferisation – not to mention a less than clement climate. We concentrated on visiting sites in the valleys where the butterfly had been recorded in the recent past, but dabbled a little in terra nova, looking for new colonies. At Ellerburn Bank, in Thornton Dale, the butterfly was lingering on nicely – we found 46 Cowslip clumps supporting larvae on this nature reserve and others nearby. We were shown round by a black and white tom cat, out rabbiting. Shortly after our visit the Rabbits took over severely, and the butterfly died out. More tom cats were needed. At the south end of Newton Dale, above Pickering, a small but thriving colony was present in a young conifer plantation. Shortly afterwards, the conifers grew too tall and the colony was lost. There was also a scatter of tiny relic colonies dotted about further north, along the North Yorkshire Moors railway line. What was worrying was the presence of suitable but unoccupied habitat. There was no reason, obvious or otherwise, why the butterfly had died out from Gundale, from where it had been known for over a hundred years. An abandoned quarry system near Silpho was even more perplexing. This site, above a wooded dale delightfully named Whisperdale but full of screaming Girl Guides for our visit, looked to be in perfect condition for the butterfly, which was clearly absent. Presumably, there was no colony nearby from which colonisation could be sourced. At last, as the rain increased, we found a thriving colony amongst a few acres of scrubby limestone grassland above Rievaulx. There we counted 269 breeding sites (eaten Cowslip clumps), perhaps equating to 25–30 butterflies on a fine day in early June.
On the limestone grassland slopes the Northern Brown Argus was almost omni-present, though for much of the time these butterflies were to be found at roost on the grass heads, jewelled with raindrops; but being hardened northerners, they sprang to life immediately the sun glimmered. The Dark Green Fritillary was present in modest numbers on many of the open grasslands, but was loath to take to the air due to the cold temperatures. In the valley bottoms some sizeable colonies of the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary were found, based on Marsh Violets growing in wet flushes. Everywhere, Ringlets abounded. They, almost alone, relish a damp summer. The Small Skipper and Marbled White were moving in, as recent colonists, and we also found a couple of White-letter Hairstreak colonies, based on Wych Elms which abound on the valley slopes. We also visited Fen Bog, the famous Large Heath site along the North Yorkshire Moors railway line below Goathland. In this valley fen and mire system the middle race of the Large Heath occurs – the moderately spotted race. They were bobbing up from in front of us and allowing themselves to be carried away downwind. I found a freshly emerged female and located the vacated pupal case. However, tired out that evening, I failed to describe where the pupa occurred in my diary, and cannot for the life of me remember anything about it now. This may well be the only record of the pupa of the Large Heath being found in the wild, and it is useless – and there is no excuse for bad natural history recording.
Perusal of the weather forecast suggested that Yorkshire was going to be plagued by endogenous cloud whilst the western fringe of Britain bathed in glorious sunshine. There was only one thing to do: abandon the Moors and spend a couple of days on the Morecambe Bay limestone hills. High Brown Fritillaries leapt to greet us on Hutton Roof, a partially wooded limestone pavement east of the M6, the nearest High Brown site to Yorkshire. But after one glorious day Yorkshire's weather crossed the Pennines. The M6 southbound enveloped us in motorway spray, all the way back to a sunny Hampshire.
Down south, a reasonable August and September were spent surveying new territory in and around Hampshire – primarily chalk downland fragments trapped within vast acreages of arable farmland. Many of these places, remnants of the extensive tracts of downland that had characterised Hampshire, were surprisingly rich, supporting colonies of Chalkhill Blue, Small Blue, Brown Argus and the like, and even tiny relic populations of the Duke of Burgundy. The season was running so late that many of the high-summer and August species lingered unusually long, usefully extending the surveying season. The problem was that many of these newly found sites were tiny, isolated fragments, too small to maintain their butterfly faunas indefinitely and, above all, neglected because they were too small to be viable as grazing units or because the farms had converted to arable farming. They were last-ditch stand places, tiny corners into which butterflies had been pushed by wave after wave of agricultural intensification, backed up by afforestation of downland fragments. In effect, this was depressing work.
Outside Hampshire, a number of sites for His Grace the Duke of Burgundy were visited, localities known to support sizeable populations, primarily to advise on habitat management for this rapidly declining butterfly. Judging by the abundance of eaten Cowslip plants, Edge Common in the Cotswolds and Ivinghoe Beacon in the north Chilterns threatened to rival Noar Hill for the privilege of holding Britain's premier Duke of Burgundy population. I was somewhat blown away.
Women, especially wives, can choose their moments carefully, such that Mrs O chose the precise moment when I was being blown away by the scale of the Burgundy population at Ivinghoe to announce that we were going to become parents in May.
Some redemption was necessary after the deprivations of the previous year, but 1986 started wet and cold, with widespread flooding. The last thing the country needed was February, but we got it, big time, for we were subjected to the second coldest February of the century (after 1947). Snow arrived in the South on the 6th, and remained on the ground for over ten days as temperatures struggled to rise above zero, boosted by a biting wind from Siberia which dominated the whole of the second half of a loathsome month. At The Lodge, we again retreated into a single room, the toilet froze and our beloved resident cock Blackbird, a partial-albino called Percy Bysshe, died on the windowsill. On Noar Hill, the sheep and Rabbits were both reduced to stripping Ash bark, as the grass lay buried. The beginning of March saw no improvement, but then, quite suddenly, at the end of the first week something approximating to spring arrived: Snowdrops immediately popped up, Robins began to trill and a Small Tortoiseshell appeared in the garden, thought better of it and retreated back to hibernation in a densely foliated conifer.
March concluded with a vicious gale, borne on a very deep depression, which took a while to blow itself out. Worse, Easter came early, at the end of March, and as the diary bemoans: Why is it that every time Easter comes early the weather is Vile? The omens were not looking good: there was still no sign of a Chiffchaff, and England's cricketers were getting pulverised in the West Indies.
April started ominously – perishing cold in fact. By mid-month I had seen a mere ten individual butterflies, of just two species, and had yet to hear a Chiffchaff. Some improvement then occurred, bringing in the migrant birds and, on the 30th, the first Orange-tips – some two weeks late. April 1986 later won the accolade of being the coldest in southern England since 1922. The first leaves only started to appear on the Beeches and oaks in early May, though within a week they were well in leaf and the early Bluebells were starting to flower. Mid-month the first Duke of Burgundy males appeared on Noar Hill, two weeks late. They then struggled, as the weather found diverse ways to irritate – rain, wind, convective cloud cover, the lot. The month was, however, redeemed by the birth of our first child on May 27th. We named her Lucina, after the Roman goddess of light, and of course after the Duke of Burgundy (Hamearis lucina). The name could readily be shortened to Lucy. It was.
First-time dads go off on an adrenaline rush, especially if blessed with a daughter. This one went off searching for Duke of Burgundy colonies in obscure parts of Hampshire. The insect was, though, suffering from the effects of a poor May. At Noar Hill, its numbers were decidedly substandard, partly on account of the weather and partly on account of rising Rabbit numbers. The Rabbit is probably this rare butterfly's Number One enemy, for Rabbits graze too close to the ground, lowering the sward height such that the Cowslips on which the larvae feed become stunted and the leaves turn yellow before the larvae are fully grown. Something had to be done about the rising Rabbit population on Noar Hill. Done it was, by means of dawn shooting with a .22 rifle and silencer, aiming safely down at targets in the chalk pits. My cat, Mouse, also helped – just as, on other occasions, he also helped by discovering Yellow-necked Mouse and Harvest Mouse on the reserve. Later, after fifteen happy years, he was buried there.
Spring and early summer were so poor that I did not see the first Red Admiral of the year until June 10th, when it suddenly arrived in modest numbers, borne on some reasonable weather. A disappointing June ended well, though by now the butterfly season was running decidedly late, so late that the Orange-tip lingered into early July and butterflies such as the Marbled White, Ringlet, Silver-studded Blue and White Admiral did not appear before around July 7th.
A change in the weather was due, and we got one. It was ushered in by the following event:
Diary, June 22nd 1986: An excellent thunderstorm. It began at 11 pm with a 45-minute preamble of distant sheet lightning, after an evening of eerie pallid light. Around midnight rolling thunder came over, in waves, accompanied by both sheet and forked lightning and some torrential bursts of rain.
There are people, like me, who just have to be outside in a storm like that – to be amongst it, and within it, and to absorb its energy.
In mid-July ten days were spent surveying for High Brown Fritillary colonies in the Malvern Hills and the Wyre Forest in the West Midlands, commissioned by the NCC. Simon Grove, a young Hampshire naturalist of considerable ability, joined me on this venture. He was recovering from university finals, and from a broken heart. I was temporarily escaping from fatherhood. To make the money run further, and to escape deep into Nature, we took tents and camped in Eastnor Park, an ancient pasture woodland below the west flank of the southern Malverns, adorned with veteran oaks and grazed by sheep and a long-established herd of Red Deer. Incredibly, the weather was set fair; our noses burnt and then peeled.
We knew that the High Brown had strong colonies at the southern end of the Malverns, based on Swinyard Hill and over to Eastnor Park, via Gullet Quarry, but had little other information. Those were the places which the West Midland butterflyers of the time visited, but few ventured beyond those safe havens. Swinyard Hill is a steep Bracken-covered slope on the east flank of the southern Malverns, directly above Castle Morton Common. A large number of sheep then grazed on the common and roamed onto Swinyard Hill. It was particularly important that they grazed off the soft grasses that grew amongst the Bracken in spring, to ensure the warm microclimate conditions required by High Brown larvae. In the process, these animals trampled down the dead Bracken and so enabled the necessary violet leaves to abound. Gullet Quarry, with its deep blue lagoon water, naked swimmers, naturalised goldfish and exposures of ancient rocks, was little more than a staging post for High Browns flying between Swinyard and Eastnor, stopping by to feed on its bramble and Buddleia flowers.
The place of most interest was Eastnor Park, particularly the south-facing Bracken slope below the obelisk. That slope was a revelation. It had recently been used as a venue for ad hoc four-wheel-drive training events, with the vehicles following no fixed course through the Bracken and regularly changing route. By happy chance, this rather mindless activity produced the best breeding conditions for the High Brown I have ever seen, for the trackways consisted of an open, knee-high Bracken cover with huge drifts of violets amongst the masticated remains of the previous season's Bracken fronds and stalks. Grasses had great difficulty coping with all this and were consequently sparse – and the High Brown requires drifts of violets amongst broken Bracken litter, without the grass that cools the microclimate down. On this slope the High Brown Fritillary abounded, such that I counted 90 in an hour one afternoon. Best of all, a muddy puddle along one of the trackways attracted a dozen males one hot and humid afternoon, to imbibe moisture. The photograph had to be carefully lined up, requiring lying down prostrate, elbows in mud. But coming towards me was a jogger. ‘Please! Go left! Slow down! Let me take this photo.’ But no, he ran straight through, scattering the host of golden butterflies, and splashing me. A paltry four High Browns returned, and were duly photographed. Forgiveness can take a long time to materialise: nearly thirty years on, there is no sign of it arriving yet.
Perhaps that jogger was an outrider of the Four Riders of the Apocalypse, because soon afterwards the High Brown Fritillary collapsed at Eastnor. First, the four-wheel vehicles were persuaded to keep to an established route, which produced wholly unsuitable High Brown breeding habitat. Second, the number of deer and sheep declined greatly, and no longer ventured onto the obelisk slope. Finally, Bluebells increased dramatically and ousted the violets, and provided microclimate conditions that were far too cool for this heat-loving butterfly.
Simon and I searched almost the entire length of the Malverns, though avoiding the high northern summits where soil conditions were too acidic for violets to grow. We found small colonies on and around all the southern hills, places with haunting names like Ragged Stone Hill, Chase End Hill, Midsummer Hill (where several ley lines converge), Hangman's Hill and British Camp. The butterfly was thriving there. But we could see that it was highly vulnerable, dependent on high levels of commoners’ stock and threatened by neglect and abandonment. Within a few years those fears were fully realised.
We searched northwards along the Herefordshire/Worcestershire border, discovering dwindling populations on Bringsty and Bromyard Commons, above Bromyard. These Bracken-invaded commons were grazed by large numbers of sheep, but even so conditions were deteriorating rapidly, as the sheep were not penetrating the Bracken stands adequately and the commoners were giving up the practice of periodically burning blocks of Bracken, on advice from the fire brigade. The butterfly was lost from these two sites when grazing animals were culled during the 2001 foot & mouth outbreak.
Finally, we spent two days looking for the High Brown Fritillary in the Wyre Forest, on the Worcestershire/Shropshire border. Two days to search a 3333-hectare (8200-acre) forest is clearly inadequate, but we were assisted by Mike Williams and other members of Butterfly Conservation's West Midlands Branch. All told we saw thirteen High Browns, some of the last ever seen in Wyre, but little suitable was habitat found. Our conclusion was that the butterfly was lingering on in Wyre through inertia, breeding in tiny fragments of suitable habitat dotted about amongst open-grown trees on south-facing slopes. Shortly afterwards, the Wyre race of the High Brown Fritillary became extinct. They were the largest High Browns I have ever seen, the size of Silver-washed Fritillaries. Of course, the High Brown Fritillary stormed its way to win Butterfly of the Year for 1986.
Inspired by what was clearly a very good year for High Brown Fritillaries, I searched yet again in the New Forest for the butterfly, but failed to find it. At the end of July I journeyed up to South Lakeland to search for High Browns there, but on crossing the Cumbrian border I found that foul weather was moving down from the north. In five rotten days I managed a measly five High Browns, during glimmers of watery sun. But I did discover a Large Heath colony new to science, and on a National Nature Reserve to boot. Incredibly, it seemed that no one knew that the Large Heath occurred on Rusland Moss NNR, in the Rusland valley south of Windermere, despite it being one of our oldest National Nature Reserves. I had only gone there because I wanted to see Arthur Ransome's grave in the nearby churchyard. Finally, a lone fine day on Arnside Knott produced a scatter of soggy High Browns, drying out, and the first Scotch Argus males of the summer. Then, yet again, I was flooded out of the Lake District.
But after a rotten start August worked hard to redeem itself. The year's first Painted Ladies appeared, late. The July species were lingering on, due to the late start to the season. Silver-studded Blues were flying on the north-east Hampshire heaths well into the second half of August, whereas normally they are gone by late July. The year's Peacock hatch did not commence until August 9th, at least around Selborne, and the Brown Hairstreak did not appear there before mid-August. Small Whites abounded, until they got blasted away by an excessively wet August bank holiday.
We then entered a lengthy spell of benign weather, with day after day of gentle mild Septemberine sunshine, punctuated by an occasional day of unchallenging drizzle. In such genial weather conditions individual butterflies can live unusually long lives. Having emerged late, because of the poor spring, Gatekeepers and Small and Essex skippers lasted well into September, and Graylings into October. One Gatekeeper was seen as late as September 18th in the garden of The Lodge, the latest I have seen the species. At Old Winchester Hill NNR in Hampshire's Meon valley the Silver-spotted Skipper lasted into early October, remarkably late for that species, although it does fly distinctly later in the Meon valley than elsewhere. The pleasant early autumn weather carried on well into October, allowing me to see a faded Brown Hairstreak on Noar Hill as late as October 16th. This remains my latest sighting of that species. Small Heaths and Meadow Browns persisted until the end of the month. They might have lasted longer, only the autumn rains then arrived with a vengeance, and the country degenerated into flood and quagmire.
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Amongst the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.
From John Keats, ‘To Autumn’
Summer gradually burns itself out, rather like the human body. But it does so gently, almost imperceptibly. August is a descending month, and the subsequent vitiation into autumn is most gradual – until the oak leaves fall and we find ourselves stranded in early winter. Autumn, like winter, descends from the north, reaching the far south coast last. You can find touches of autumn in middle England in mid-August, and earlier further north – if you look.
There are autumn broods of Comma, Red Admiral, Small Copper, Small Tortoiseshell and occasionally some fresh Painted Ladies and a partial third brood of the Wall Brown. Rarely, a few other species produce autumn broods, such as the Holly Blue and White Admiral. The Speckled Wood is usually at its most numerous in early or mid-September, when its autumn brood emerges, and after warm summers late emergences of the Green-veined White occur, at least down south, and very locally. Small and Large Whites can also produce a few fresh adults in October during mild weather. Later, on warm late autumn days a few hibernating Brimstones, Peacocks and Small Tortoiseshells wake up to enjoy the last of the sunshine, before returning to hibernation.
There are early autumns, precipitated by gales in September or frosts at the start of October, middling autumns, and late autumns when the frost and rains hold off. There are also Indian summers – periods of warm fine weather during September or October – though, strictly, an Indian Summer comes after the first pulse of frosts (like ‘decimate’, the term ‘Indian summer’ has transmogrified). Whatever, our butterflies seize upon Indian summer weather and make it their own, but it is their last stand. They are doomed, and they know it; for above all else autumn tears summer's leafy temple down.
Gradually butterflies diminish and retreat as autumn advances: the number of species on the wing declines, and the individual survivors age and head south or gather in sheltered warm places, such as gardens, valley bottoms or the foot of south-facing hillsides, where they become more and more dependent on late flowers. They are pushed towards warmth, and seek out the warmest microclimates where summer lingers longest, and so become increasingly localised. The last of the year is often seen fluttering around the south-facing edge of a building, a Red Admiral usually, or a Small Tortoiseshell.
But gradually the strength of the sun wanes and the sun angles become too low in the sky, so that the temperature fails to reach the 12-degree threshold that butterflies require for activity. It is this diminution that ends the butterfly season, rather than night frost or even the autumn rains. Consequently, it is unusual to see a butterfly on the wing after November 5th – the sun has sunk too low. By the end of October the sun angles are comparable to those of mid-February.
Perhaps autumn is loved so much by people, not so much because of the colours – yellows, browns, oranges and some reds – but because it gives us a last chance to value sunshine before the pall of winter descends. Also, those final sunlit days allow us to say goodbye to summer, properly.
November is the grim reaper, the Avenging Angel of Death, which strips the leaves off the trees, casts the sun into shadow, sends forth the driving autumn rains which blow before the emptying of time, and subdues the colours of the land to the drabbest shades of brown. It is a reign of terror. We can only rage against the dying of the light, and retreat into the memories of summer gone – and start dreaming of spring.
November, the crucifixion of the year,
Spread-eagles my soul upon a naked land.
Bereft of leaves, the flail-maddened hedge,
Cut with thorns, bereft of hope.
The furrowed land where no bird flies,
But for waif-like blackened crows
Whose cries are wraiths of summer gone,
Borne on the wind that drives the rain.
The pheasant struts, there but to be shot,
And die on winter's waste of thorns.
Dismember, there is no colour here:
The blood has drained through nail holes,
In palm and heel, within the mind itself,
And in the earth, through heel and palm.
Then in the brambles, stripped by wind,
An empty warbler's nest, of twisted grass,
The makers long away in sun-tilled lands,
Their song a memory, remote, alone.
My soul flew with them time ago,
Leaving but something lost behind.
(Selborne, Hampshire, autumn 1975)