15 High-blown years: the Great Storm and afterwards

Our winters are largely unmemorable, and when we do recollect them it is seldom for positive reasons. The winter of 1986/87 was memorable, for a lengthy freeze-up. The cold weather moved down from the north at the start of the year. It was well forecast, so I removed the sheep from Noar Hill early. January 12th was one of the coldest days on record nationally, with maximum temperatures in central southern England around –5°C. Snow then fell on several consecutive days, a powdery snow that cannot be moulded into snowballs and which blows around in the wind – call it fairy snow. It blew off the fields on a bitter wind and accumulated in the lanes, cutting off villages. Around The Lodge, 20 centimetres of snow in the fields blew to form drifts more than 2 metres deep in the lanes. We were cut off for three days, during a ten-day freeze-up in which the temperature failed to rise above zero. Once again, we retreated to a single room in the house, with three cats and a baby – and survived. A slow thaw began on January 21st, generating three days of fog. All told, the nation suffered a spell of fifteen sunless days.

February brought a change, to mild and grey weather – day after day of thoroughly mindless weather. Mid-month, the sun broke through, but with it came the return of the cold. At least it was dry and the first butterflying expeditions of the year could be launched, in search of Brown Hairstreak eggs in north-west Hampshire, to the south-west of Andover. This was terra nova, a vast undulating expanse of arable landscape – Edward Thomas called it ploughland – over Clay-with-Flints overlying the chalk. There were ‘old’ records of the Brown Hairstreak in this district, but no one had looked in recent years. Sure enough, the butterfly was still present, breeding along green lanes flanked by Blackthorn and on the few roadside hedges that were not flail-cut to smithereens annually. Major epicentres were discovered on MOD land around Shipton Bellinger, on the Wiltshire border, and at Cholderton, where an enlightened landowner, Henry Edmonds, manages his estate with butterflies, moths, birds and flowers firmly in mind. Henry is in touch with Nature, and with the land in his sound stewardship.

Early March brought more snow, this time the wet variety that settles on the grass and decorates trees nicely, but melts on roads. So we did not get cut off. Spring was long in coming, and the entire nation was becoming decidedly Fed Up. Then, on March 27th we suffered a violent storm, the fiercest spring storm I had known. Nationally, twelve people were killed and a large number of trees were blown down. It was perhaps a foretaste of what was to come.

Spring then broke through – on Passion Sunday, April 5th. Chiffchaffs flew in from the south and butterflies took to the air. My first butterfly of the year was, unusually, a Comma. The Comma was the butterfly of that early spring, outnumbering the Brimstone and Small Tortoiseshell. But no sooner had spring started than the weather got into the wretched habit of clouding up for the day and clearing for the night. Anyone with an eye for butterflies will understand the frustration that this weather pattern instils, especially in spring and after a long numbing winter. Nonetheless, the first Orange-tip appeared in East Hampshire on April 14th, bang on time. Once again, the species had timed the start of its emergence with the flowering of the Lady's Smock, one of its two main foodplants.

St George's Day, April 23rd, finally sorted things out. The weather was perfect, many Orange-tips hatched and an immigration of Red Admirals occurred – they had to be migrants, for the winter must surely have been too cold for this butterfly to have hibernated successfully. Holly Blues, Green Hairstreaks and Speckled Woods all quickly followed. Five reasonable, or even good, weeks ensued, allowing our spring butterflies to enjoy a successful season. It did, however, prove to be the best spell of weather of a difficult season. It brought out the first Duke of Burgundy of the year on Noar Hill on April 27th, a freshly emerged male launching itself at passing hoverflies from a perch in one of the chalk pits. By the end of April the vegetation was some ten days ahead of the norm, with the Beech, birch and oak trees well in leaf. By mid-May the Hawthorn was in flower, bedecked with snow again. Somehow, a bitter winter had led into an early spring.

The Forestry Commission arranged for a survey of the Pearl-bordered Fritillary in Alice Holt Forest. We were worried it was dying out there, as the Forestry Commission had (rightly) stopped felling blocks of oak woodland. This meant that there was a shortage of suitable new clearings and young plantations for the butterfly to colonise. The news was better than expected, but still worrying. I found two thriving colonies, at either end of the forest, both in experimental areas used by Forestry Commission Forest Research. In these plots, each of about 1 hectare in size, trees were planted, grown on for a few years and then grubbed out and replaced. The objective was to study how well saplings of different species established themselves. Crucially, Bracken, bramble and coarse grasses were controlled, by cutting and spraying, enabling violets to abound. Sure enough, in one of these research plots, in Lodge Inclosure at the north end of the forest, many Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were on the wing. I spent an afternoon catching, marking and recapturing them. All told 65 were netted and marked, and one was recaptured as many as six times. Jeremy Thomas kindly analysed the data and reported that there were between 128 and 182 individuals flying on the day. This represented an annual emergence of about 450 Pearl-bordered Fritillaries. Sadly, soon afterwards these experimental plots were abandoned, and the butterfly died out in Alice Holt. There was nowhere new for them to colonise. The Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, which also utilised these plots, lasted a while longer, then followed suit. Alice has been a shadow of herself since.

June started poorly, with a deep depression which gave vent to a fully fledged autumn gale. The month sagged, then recovered briefly, only to fall apart when the Lords Test match started. The spring butterflies, together with the immigrant Painted Ladies, were knocked out, and the high summer species were prevented from emerging. The sun returned towards the end of the month to bring out the Silver-studded Blues on the East Hampshire heaths, and the Ringlets and Marbled Whites on the downs.

The new month began promisingly, with the first Silver-washed Fritillaries and White Admirals appearing in the woods and another electrifying display of Dark Green Fritillaries at Porton Down, north-east of Salisbury, on July 5th. The latter was emerging in numbers that day, and a group from Butterfly Conservation's Hampshire Branch encountered several pairings amongst the grasses – limp, soft-winged females at the mercy of amorous males who were quartering the breeding grounds, low, picking off virgin females as soon as they had emerged. As the day progressed and the heat intensified they moved on to Viper's Bugloss – large orange butterflies with silver pearls on their undersides, feeding avidly together on plumes of mauve and blue flowers, under a cloudless sky. Send for an artist, or a poet.

The following day – July 6th – was National White Admiral Day, and The Lodge excelled itself. The previous July we had noticed a female White Admiral showing an interest in the old Honeysuckle which covered much of the southern front of the house, but assumed she would not lay eggs there. But at 5 pm a year later we spotted a freshly emerged, soft-winged White Admiral sitting on the Honeysuckle. The butterfly had bred there after all! I took it down to the local wood, a kilometre away, and set it free. Later the vacant pupal case was found, high up on the Honeysuckle tangle. Such was The Lodge, and such was my contentment and depth of belonging there.

The fine weather held. Ringlets erupted on Noar Hill, with the Marbled Whites appearing soon after them. Over at Bentley Wood, I R P Heslop's old heartland on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, butterflies were massing. The wood, a small forest really, had been sold by the Forestry Commission to the Bentley Wood Trust, a charity set up by the Colman (mustard) family with the objectives of promoting nature conservation, public access, sustainable forestry and the Christian faith – four things that blend wondrously together. The Trust set about steadily removing non-native conifers and preserving the wood's flora and fauna. They have done a superb job, for Bentley Wood to this day remains England's best site for woodland butterflies. Only one butterfly seems to have been lost from there in the last thirty years – the High Brown Fritillary, which was on its last legs, or rather wings, when the Trust acquired the wood. On July 8th 1987 I saw a magnificent female feeding on a tall Marsh Thistle, and a couple of males amongst a plethora of similar-looking Dark Green Fritillaries in what is known as the Eastern Clearing, an area of former meadowland where planted conifers had died during the 1976 drought.

The fine weather then ushered in the Purple Emperor season, with a magnificent male feeding on fresh horse manure in one of the East Hampshire Hangers near Hawkley, before capitulating horribly – just as I was setting off for two weeks surveying for the High Brown Fritillary in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The expedition could not have been more unfortunate, with day after day of cloud, drizzle and at times precipitous rain. The weather mattered little in the main, for many of the Bracken-filled commons I had been asked to visit had ceased to be suitable for the butterfly, though they might have supported populations in the not too distant past, before they became neglected. I found that the High Brown had gone from the Abberley Hills in west Worcestershire, and saw one of the last High Browns ever recorded in lovely Haugh Wood, south of Hereford. The one success was at Bircher Common and Croft Ambrey, on the National Trust's Croft estate north of Leominster. Here, between downpours, a thriving cluster of colonies was discovered, flying over Bracken on a sheep-grazed common. The National Trust was delighted that this rare and rapidly declining butterfly was present there and a major conservation initiative began. Scratched, bruised, storm-battered and suffering from foot rot and incipient trench foot, the 1987 High Brown Fritillary Roadshow was abandoned.

Of course, soon afterwards the weather improved, for a while. Hampshire welcomed me home, with a magnificent flight of Purple Emperors at Coxmoor Wood near Odiham and the news that the Essex Skipper had at last colonised Noar Hill. The latter is all but impossible to separate out from its cousin the Small Skipper in flight. I was not looking forward to separating them out during the weekly butterfly transect count there: Heaven help me, I wrote in the diary. Time was spent in the New Forest, searching for High Brown Fritillaries amongst a plethora of Dark Greens in Hawkhill Inclosure, and admiring an excellent show of Silver-washed Fritillaries in Pondhead Inclosure, the most famous of the old Forest collecting grounds, near Lyndhurst.

The summer of 1987 had fallen apart, and not even the first Clouded Yellows could redeem a blighted season. These were seen in a conifer plantation near Bramshill in north Hampshire, which was threatened by a new town development. The nature conservation interest of this former heathland site managed to stave off the threat, not least because the insect fauna turned out to be distinctly rich. Over on the Isle of Wight a public inquiry was to be held to determine the future of the coastal road that cuts over the chalk downland ridge east of Freshwater. The road, known as the Military Road, is destined to disappear as the sea gradually eats into the chalk cliffs. The county council proposed to reset the road further back into the chalk ridge, cutting through one of the richest areas of downland in the country, and one of our best butterfly sites. Evidence had to be gathered to present to the inquiry. This involved surveying and counting the butterflies – several thousand Chalkhill Blues for a start. Suffice it to say that the inquiry was won, and that discussions over the future of the road along the west coast of the Isle of Wight are ongoing to this day.

August was up and down, but mostly down. On one of the better days I visited Watership Down, famous for its Rabbits. This proved to be one of the most disappointing stretches of Hampshire downland I have visited, with much flowerless Red Fescue grassland and few butterflies other than a modicum of Common Blues and Small Heaths. The Rabbits had over-grazed it, prior to leaving, perhaps in disgust.

The first autumn gale came over on September 6th, though in truth we had had several during the summer. Somehow, the Small Tortoiseshell came good, very good – so much so that it wrested the title of Butterfly of the Year 1987 away from the Pearl-bordered Fritillary. Perhaps the poor weather had hindered the larval parasites more than the host. At least 25 were present in our garden at The Lodge each sunny day, feeding up prior to hibernation. Some fresh Painted Ladies joined them too. Then there was another autumn gale, this time on September 12th. Unabashed, the Small Tortoiseshells continued to emerge: on September 17th over 50 were counted in The Lodge garden. Then the Red Admirals appeared in numbers, feasting drunkenly on rotting apples and pears. Another gale came over, and a precipitous deluge on October 9th. The weather was winding itself up, the rivers were swollen and the ground saturated.

Diary, October 15th 1987: Heavy rain from early pm. Very deep depression. Had to attend evening meeting in Hants County Council underground chamber in Winchester. Walked out into and then drove home in a tempest. Switched engine off going up Arlesford bypass and was blown uphill for two miles. Went for walk under swaying dancing trees until I was bowled over and decided it wasn't time to meet my Maker – limbs were crashing down ...

Diary, October 16th 1987: Hurricane during night, with heavy rain, gradually easing off at dawn with wind dying down, exhausted, in pm. The Great Storm of 1987, an intensifying Returning Polar Maritime Depression moving up from Biscay, only the weather men hadn't forecast it. Seventeen people lost their lives.

It began at midnight and peaked around 5 am here. London recorded a gust of 94 mph, but many spots along the south coast had gusts in excess of 100 mph. It was even more devastating than the March 27th storm, with myriad trees falling – the leaves were still on and the ground saturated. Our local environs looked like one of those haunting photos of shell-damaged woodland from the Great War: hardly a tree had survived unscathed. The towering Beech to the immediate east of The Lodge was rent asunder, like the temple veil in Jerusalem. It took us most of the morning to clear the drive.

The Lodge escaped rather miraculously, merely losing a coping tile, the electricity (for nine days), telephone (five days) and water supply (four days). Luckily The Lodge didn't present much of a solid object and the apocalyptic wind just howled through it, billowing the curtains and blowing out decades worth of dust from under the floor boards – this hung as a miasma for days. In the garden the sweet peas disappeared into orbit. All the colour was washed out of surviving oak leaves, as if blanched.

Managed to get up to Noar Hill (to check the sheep), expecting to find the electric flexi-netting up in the trees. Two rolls had vanished, blown utterly away. The hanger looks as if it has been clear-felled. The sheep hadn't noticed.

The following day the picture of devastation throughout central southern and south-east England became clear. Myriad mature, but drawn-up and spindly, Beech trees had been uprooted, like dominoes. A visit to the Selborne hangers revealed (diary): A scene of near-total devastation, probably only one in every 20 trees left standing along Noar Hill Hanger, and many of those are damaged. The hanger was impenetrable, looking as if it had been bombed. Arboreal carnage. This picture was repeated all over the south-east quarter of the UK. Over a million trees were lost. I never found the flexi-netting.

Incredibly, on that day of sunshine and easing showers, I saw a Small White in our garden at The Lodge at noon, and then a Small Tortoiseshell and a Brimstone. Later, on Noar Hill, a Red Admiral was active. Somehow, some butterflies had survived the maelstrom; but that's butterflies all over for you, they are life's great survivors. A few days later I managed to get to the hangers above Petersfield. From Shoulder of Mutton Hill, the hillside dedicated to Edward Thomas, I counted blue smoke rising from 27 wood fires dotted across the Sussex Weald. The great clear-up had begun. But on the summit a superb Beech grove, a natural cathedral fit for a great poet, was lying horizontal, uprooted. Nearby, the road down Stoner Hill was so badly blocked that dynamite was needed to clear it. As around Selborne, it was not so much the veteran Beech pollards that had come down – though many had – but the densely grown and drawn-up maiden trees.

A massive germination of young trees took place, and within twenty years the scars had healed. Time creates these issues, and time solves them. Woods think long term, we don't.

And the Great Storm did some good. It uprooted countless acres of ugly arboreal slums which should never have been established in the first place. Mile after mile of dense, non-native and poorly maintained conifer plantations were blown down, creating a wonderful opportunity to resolve some of the worst excesses of the twentieth-century forestry revolution. The storm proved to be a pathfinder towards the Forestry Commission's laudable Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS) programme, which removes conifers from ancient woodland. Above all, many of our woods were far too dense prior to the storm, having been neglected for decades. The storm opened them up to the benefit of much wildlife, notably the butterflies.

In the short term, the storm provided great opportunities to look for the eggs of the Purple and White-letter Hairstreaks, which breed high up in oaks and elms respectively. In Hampshire, Andy Barker, Adrian Hoskins and I spent much time searching for these eggs, finding that Purple Hairstreak eggs were profuse in what had been the high canopy of dense oak stands, and on several different species of oak too. I was finding a Purple Hairstreak egg about every three minutes. In the New Forest, north-east of Brockenhurst, the beleaguered Pearl-bordered Fritillary benefited greatly from mass wind-blow and the resultant clearance, and in the medium term the Purple Emperor benefited from mass germination of its foodplant, sallow trees.

October remained wet to the last, achieving its ambition to be one of the wettest on record. Mercifully, November calmed things down, by being cold and dry. Finally, the Christmas period was remarkably mild: Red Admirals appeared out of hibernation, and a small influx of Painted Ladies was noticed by birders along the south coast. The Daily Mail even published a letter reporting a Painted Lady at Ventnor on Christmas Day.

A clear and mild night, with a three-quarter moon and a host of stars, ushered in 1988. However, it was not long before rain started. In contrast to its predecessor the winter was mild, ridiculously so, but horribly wet. Aconites and Snowdrops were well out by mid-January. At the end of the month we left our beloved Lodge and moved in to a small and rather loathsome house we were purchasing in nearby Alton. The ending of our tenure at The Lodge, with its pantiles and Pipistrelle Bats, Death-watch Beetles and condensated windows, severely damaged my relationship with Nature – by distancing me from the countryside and, less obviously, from the weather and the night sky. I have not felt genuinely at home in any house since. There one could dwell, not just close to Nature, but as part of it – for the place was so primitive that there was little choice.

Looking after the sheep and organising scrub bashes on Noar Hill, with occasional sorties into the far west of Hampshire to survey the Brown Hairstreak population, maintained some vestige of sanity. In mid-February, with the rookeries in full repair and Primroses blooming, the first butterfly of the year appeared – a yellow Brimstone weaving its way beneath bare trees at the foot of Shoulder of Mutton Hill, by Petersfield. By mid-March the vegetation in both town and countryside looked a month ahead of the norm, with sallows in flower and Hawthorn hedges leafing commonly. The year was running ahead of itself, in what was to be the start of a long run of absurdly mild winters.

April started well, and it was holiday time. A week was spent walking the coastal path between Hartland Point in Devon and Bude in north Cornwall, with a small daughter in a back-pack – up and down, from combe to combe, stopping to play on wooden bridges over helter-skelter streams lined with mosses and Golden Saxifrage. The slopes were heavily scented by the heady coconut aroma of gorse blossom. Incoming Swallows skimmed by in loose groups.

This coastline is steeped in butterflying history, for this had been Large Blue country. The butterfly had been discovered along this coast around 1891, in the mysterious Millook valley. Later, during the 1940s, it was found to occur in most of the sea combes between Bude and Hartland Quay. Then myxomatosis eliminated the Rabbits, and the heavily grazed and sparsely vegetated slopes proved to be the perfect seedbed for gorse and Blackthorn, not to mention rough grasses. The gentler slopes lost their butterflies through agricultural improvement. It is not possible to walk these valleys today without immense sadness for what has been lost, especially amongst the Blackthorn and gorse entanglements of the Millook valley, where some lingering pathos tells of paradise lost. Clearly, though, the old collectors must have sweated buckets collecting their specimens on the near-precipitous slopes, though presumably they were not carrying toddlers.

In mid-April the Orange-tips started to appear, and some Painted Ladies. There were reports of huge numbers of Ladies in Spain, Portugal and southern France. April had been reasonable, and had brought out the first of the Noar Hill Duke of Burgundies as early as the 26th. After four poor days May righted itself, and a fair scatter of Painted Ladies appeared. I saw 20 in a week in various places in Hampshire. In theory the arrival of the Painted Lady augured well, though its previous two invasions – in 1980 and 1985 – had been thwarted by poor summer weather.

The Forestry Commission had set up an experimental programme to enhance butterfly populations in Cheriton Wood, near Arlesford in mid Hampshire. Originally a coppice-with-standards wood on Clay-with-Flints overlying the chalk, Cheriton Wood had been felled and replanted with conifers, neglected, and leased out to an intensive pheasant shoot. Annoyingly, it had escaped the ‘Hurricane’ unscathed. Early in 1987, rides had been widened and a series of bays created, the object being to see how these simple measures would benefit butterfly populations in a coniferised wood. I was tasked with studying butterfly population changes there, and learnt much from the five-year programme. One of the immediate beneficiaries was the Brimstone, the females of which homed in on Purging Buckthorn bushes that were regrowing strongly in the coppice bays. So that is what makes Brimstones tick! Coppice the buckthorns, for like the Brown Hairstreak and its Blackthorn, this butterfly favours dynamically growing bushes. The practice on nature reserves at the time was to leave buckthorn bushes well alone. Inspired, I coppiced some of the buckthorns on Noar Hill, with dramatic results. In Cheriton Wood, Brimstones thrived on first-, second- and third-year coppice regrowth, then forsook the maturing bushes.

Some of the most wonderful, memorable days of one's life occur in mid-May, when spring is at its best. Such was Saturday May 14th 1988. Liverpool was playing Wimbledon in the FA Cup Final, under a shimmering sky. Down in Bentley Wood, towards Salisbury, the Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were emerging in numbers, pilgrim Painted Ladies were visiting Bluebell flowers along with ageing Peacocks, and all were being busily and bossily intercepted and seen off by male Duke of Burgundies and equally irate Dingy and Grizzled skippers. These were all thriving in the Eastern Clearing, which was being carefully managed by the Bentley Wood Trust. I was supposed to be surveying the hoverflies there but had got badly hijacked by the butterflies, especially the Pearl-bordered Fritillary, of which three distinct colonies were found, and the dark woodland race of the Duke of Burgundy which was breeding on Primrose plants along the mown path edges. A return visit to Bentley Wood took place on June 7th, by which time spring had merged into early summer and the Pearl-bordereds, Burgundies and spring skippers were all but over. Instead, Marsh Fritillaries were emerging in a clearing in the centre of the wood, a large and lovely race too, taking nectar from Bugle and Tormentil flowers. Best of all, a huge emergence of the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary was taking place, and the brassy males were skimming and fluttering low over the bracken and rushes. For years now, Bentley Wood has been our best and most loved site for woodland butterflies. It can lay on the most magical of days, not least because its butterflies make an essential contribution to the immense sense of place that is assiduously preserved there.

Taking another stab at surveying the Herefordshire commons for High Brown Fritillary colonies was going to be the highlight of the 1988 butterfly season. The previous July's attempt had been a weather-spoilt teaser. It was clear that the butterfly was in trouble in what had almost certainly been a stronghold county, but there was still the very real chance of turning up some sizeable colonies. The big find of the 1987 survey had been Bircher Common, on National Trust land north of Leominster. It needed visiting in early summer, to assess habitat conditions. One of the problems with surveying for High Brown Fritillary during the butterfly's flight season is that by then the bracken canopy has closed over: one can see the adult insect, but it is very hard to read breeding conditions. So in mid-May the old 1986 Malverns High Brown partnership of Grove and Oates was dusted off and dispatched to north Herefordshire, to look at violet densities amongst dead Bracken litter, search for the distinctive but elusive caterpillars, and identify and map breeding areas.

The weather was good, probably too good, for High Brown larvae are relatively easy to find during thin-cloud conditions, when they bask openly, but during hot sunshine they hide. Fortunately, patchy cloud came over during the afternoon to produce a magical half hour during which eleven of the bronze spiny caterpillars were found, basking on dead Bracken fragments. By caterpillar-hunting standards that's Mega, especially as High Brown larvae cryptically match the pieces of dead Bracken stems and fronds on which they sit. We found that the butterfly had two distinct breeding grounds on Bircher Common. Better still, we found that the High Brown was breeding in a few discrete patches on the ramparts of the Neolithic hill fort of Croft Ambrey, a place haunted by the spirits of autumn, and also on the sheep-grazed west-facing slope of Yatton Hill below. In other words, there was a cluster of colonies, each with distinct breeding areas, within a couple of square kilometres of landscape. Additionally, several other areas of potential habitat were spotted across the valley from the Croft Ambrey ramparts. We were looking at what conservation biologists call an intact metapopulation, a loose cluster of habitat patches within an area of landscape. I could not wait until July.

June was indeterminate, then in early July we were subjected to the deepest July depression since 1902. The White Admirals were blasted away. A few days of indifferent weather followed, before another depression came over, followed by a return to sunshine and showers. But I could wait no longer, the assault on the Herefordshire commons was launched. It could not possibly suffer worse weather than I had experienced there the previous July. It did. The expedition started reasonably, with days of long cloudy periods interspersed with short sunny spells. Such conditions are workable: the trick is to explore during cloud, keeping an eye out for developing sunny breaks, and make sure you are in the best-looking spots when the sun deigns to come out. I started on Swinyard Hill, a known ‘good site’ at the southern end of the Malverns, in order to get a measure of what numbers were like. They were far from impressive. Then, three days on slopes around Symonds Yat in the Wye valley and on Bracken-filled commons in the Hay-on-Wye and Dorstone areas drew blank. Few of the places visited there looked suitable, but I should have turned the butterfly up at a couple of places. All the time the cloudy periods were lengthening and the sunny intervals dwindling. I found some highly promising-looking habitat, near Pontrilas, but lost the sun altogether. Then the rain began, and became relentless. When glimmers of watery sun appeared the midges and mosquitoes descended, and behaved like entomological Furies.

It is probable that the High Brown had either been recently lost or was in the latter stages of dying out from most of the places visited – steep south-facing Bracken hillsides along the Welsh border. All told, I found two new High Brown localities, both of which were poised to lose the butterfly. Eventually the sun reappeared: it was time for a stock take, which revealed that the butterfly was only present in pitiful numbers at its strongholds at Eastnor and Swinyard Hill in the southern Malverns, and at Bircher Common north of Leominster. If the butterfly was that scarce in its core sites there was little point in carrying on searching for it in poor habitat elsewhere. July 1988 was duly excommunicated and the expedition abandoned. The High Brown Fritillary owed me big time – or perhaps the Purple Emperor was wanting to reel me back in?

The butterfly season was running late after a rotten July, with the year's brood of Brimstones and Peacocks only starting to emerge in early August, along with a new, home-grown generation of Painted Ladies. August was a veritable Wendy house, in one day, out the next; or, for people on holiday, beach one day, historic mansion the next. The coppiced buckthorns in Cheriton Wood produced a superb hatch of Brimstones, which then fed avidly on Burdock flowers. An excursion to Hilliers Arboretum near Winchester revealed that the butterfly was breeding merrily there on two non-native buckthorns – Rhamnus rupestris from Eastern Europe and R. globosa from China. As is their habit during poor summers, the two cabbage whites, the Large White and Small White, appeared in unusually high numbers, making up for a general paucity of butterflies in gardens.

September began with a fully fledged autumn gale, but then settled down for a couple of weeks, perhaps seeking to redeem a wasted summer – before suddenly giving up and ushering in the autumn rains early. During the fine spell I saw my eighth and ninth (and final) Holly Blues of the year, a lousy annual tally for a supposedly ‘common’ insect, and all the more remarkable given that the butterfly became numerous the following spring. In September the damage caused by the poor summer sequence, now in its fourth year, became clear: despite excellent habitat conditions and exemplary habitat management the introduced colony of the Adonis Blue at Old Winchester Hill NNR, in Hampshire's lovely Meon valley, became extinct. The problem was that for several consecutive generations (the butterfly has two broods a year) the wretched weather did its worst at the worst possible time, just when the broods were emerging.

A scatter of freshly emerged Painted Ladies, home-grown individuals, appeared whenever the autumn produced a pleasant day. It could have won my Butterfly of the Year award, but merely came a good second. For, on a ridiculously mild day in mid-December a Brimstone was seen wandering around the Top Pit at Noar Hill. He may have been lured out of hibernation in a bramble patch by the warmth of a bonfire lit by Hampshire Conservation Volunteers nearby, but he became fully active, before settling down to hibernate in a tussock of Tufted Hair-grass. Brimstones were seen elsewhere that day. So, for lessons rendered in the odious conifer plantations of Cheriton Wood, and at Hilliers Arboretum, the Brimstone won Butterfly of the Year – though in all honesty the standard was decidedly low. We were due a good summer, and a decent butterfly season.