New Year is often a time of illusion, or even self-delusion. Caught up on a wave of optimism we misread the signs, assuming they were signs in the first place. The truth is that New Year is in the wrong place: it should either be the day after the winter solstice or when the Rooks start building, though the latter is a variable feast. No wonder signs are misread and resolutions quickly abandoned.
The first words written in the 1991 diary were, Destined to be the greatest summer of my life. Needless to say, I had misread the signs (if signs they were), for the year brought a dreadful summer. Some butterflies, of course, did well, notably some of the species whose larvae feed on grasses, for the grasses grew spectacularly well after two drought summers, and the associated larvae benefited. Moreover, my life was in inner turmoil, torn between being hefted to Selborne and the desire to explore wider afield, to develop new heartlands; torn between fighting for nature conservation locally or nationally; torn between different options for developing a career and supporting a family. Above all, I was torn between heart and head. There was little hope there, for as Dylan Thomas deftly argues in his poem ‘Should lanterns shine’, heart and head both lead helplessly. Time creates these issues (whether they are problems or opportunities is secondary), and time alone will solve them.
Winter was dire. It included a twelve-day sunless period of hateable gloom in late January. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), from which many British lovers of Nature suffer to a greater or even greater extent, was just being discovered. Then it snowed – 10 centimetres of the stuff in Hampshire, offering excellent tobogganing for a week. Eventually, winter ended, only for spring to relapse after a promising beginning. Brimstones opened the butterfly season, taking to the air en masse on March 7th. My first danced over gravestones at St Lawrence's Church in Alton, symbolising what?
All four of the butterfly species that hibernate annually appeared in good numbers, hardly surprising as they had been numerous the previous late summer and autumn. Then, an unusually prolific hatch of Holly Blue and Orange-tip commenced in mid-April. I watched a spectacular emergence of male Holly Blues on April 13th, from profuse Ivy growths on tall Ash trunks at Blacknest at the northern end of the East Hampshire Hangers, just west of Alice Holt Forest. One by one they began to search the self-same Ivy patches for emerging females. Now that's decisiveness and clarity of purpose for you! But spring was late, with April failing to produce either a Cuckoo or a Swallow, for migrant birds were held up by a cold northerly airflow which persisted well into May. Holly Blues defied the weather and continued to appear in even better numbers than they had during the great spring of 1990, but gradually the adverse weather conquered them, for May was dull and chilly, though dry. Slowly but surely the promise was squeezed out of the spring of 1991, and the Holly Blues and all they stood for succumbed.
There were some memorable days, of course, and adventures into new heartlands. At the end of May I explored, for the first time, the sea combe and undercliff system around the exquisite village of Branscombe on the south coast of Devon, close to the Dorset border. Now this is Wood White country, but with a difference. In England this most fragile-looking of our butterflies is strongly associated with grassy woodland rides and other sheltered grassland habitats. Here it occurs along a crumbling sandstone cliff system, and on the adjoining chalk slopes. Even the coast of the English Riviera seems too exposed for this butterfly, but there is shelter for it here and there, along the paths, in combes and in the slumps and hollows of old landslips. There were also abandoned potato fields studded along the slumped cliff system, for Branscombe was once famous for its new potatoes. Those fields, allotments effectively, are now reverting to scrubland. The butterfly breeds in all these situations, and along the margins of rough hillside fields, where Bracken and brambles encroach over sagging barbed wire. The best breeding grounds I found were where Bird's-foot Trefoil was growing through low Privet scrub in an area where a minor landslip had occurred a few years previously. There the females were busily laying their eggs, on foodplants straggling through developing scrub. Soon, of course, the scrub would win through and the butterfly would have to breed elsewhere. Best of all, Wood Whites were feeding hungrily on Purple Gromwell flowers, a rare and most lovely plant that grows along the coastal paths. And there were colonies of Pearl-bordered Fritillaries in Bracken stands along the rough field edges, and Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries in a damp hollow full of Marsh Violets. With butterflying, there are many days, many excursions one would love to relive, and this was one.
If May was dull, June was duller. It made its way into the history books for being the cloudiest June in England and Wales since 1929. Butterflies tried to sit it out, but one by one they failed. There were a few good days. One, in early June, was memorable for a survey expedition to woodland on the Beaulieu River, close to the New Forest coast. Here were vistas into the New Forest of old, before mass coniferisation. Historic places possess cracks in time which allow us to peep into their past. The broad Bracken-filled rides amongst oak forest planted to provide timber for the Navy offered up colonies of Pearl-bordered Fritillaries and even a relic colony of the Duke of Burgundy, based on Primrose. The latter was especially important, for the Duke was on the point of extinction in the Forest, and was feared lost from the Crown lands. These were indeed the last Burgundies I saw in the New Forest – small and dark they were, true forest dwellers. I returned in high summer, hoping beyond hope to turn up the High Brown Fritillary there, but found only a few pockets of suitable-looking breeding habitat, though a worn Painted Lady female was seen laying her eggs on Marsh Cudweed along a bare track, an unusual foodplant for this butterfly.
There was a journey back into places buried in my personal past, Lambert's Castle and Pilsdon Pen near Crewkerne. I discovered a thriving colony of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary in the bog below the Castle. Then a few years later the Marsh Fritillary colonised, providing a welcome example of a rare butterfly colonising somewhere new. My last visit to Pilsdon Pen, a brooding hill fort straight out of the darkest moments of a Thomas Hardy novel, had been on the day of my father's cremation (which I was deemed too young to attend). I was in safe hands on this return, being accompanied by William Keighley, the kindest of all National Trust wardens, a mild man whose relationship with the places in his care was based on love and understanding. Eggardon Hill, another of the west Dorset hill forts, this time on the Chalk, was discovered, and known for the first time. We also visited Bind Barrow, a low hill of Tor-grass on the coast near Burton Bradstock, and the westernmost site for the Lulworth Skipper. William and I found several larvae there, within loosely spun ‘tents’ on broad leaf blades in tall prominent tussocks of Tor-grass. These are quite easy to find if you spy out vigorous, semi-isolated tussocks and then look for the distinctive larval feeding marks either side of the larval ‘tent’.
Up on the Bristol Channel coast, I checked out the colony of Glanville Fritillary at Sand Point, above Weston Super Mud. The butterfly had been kindly but unofficially introduced to the south-facing slope of this Carboniferous Limestone promontory in 1983 and had persisted, somehow. It had become quite a dilemma for the National Trust, for butterfly enthusiasts wanted the butterfly to flourish there, despite the limited size and varying quality of the habitat. The practice of moving butterflies around, to unoccupied suitable-looking habitat, is one of the many manifestations of people's love for butterflies, and an understandable reaction to their decline.
June worsened, eventually despairing of itself and giving up the ghost. One of its victims was the small colony of the Small Blue on Noar Hill, which all but failed in 1991, simply on account of the weather. Habitat conditions for it there were good, I had made sure of that. The cold dull June also meant that the midsummer butterflies emerged late – a trip down to Dartmoor in early July found that the High Brown Fritillary had scarcely started to emerge there, and also that many of the butterfly's Bracken stands had become too grassy, unsuitable for breeding. Elsewhere in Devon, I saw the last High Brown Fritillary ever seen on the National Trust's Arlington estate in west Exmoor, a victim of agricultural intensification. Eventually I discovered, or rather rediscovered, a large population on the Bracken-infested slopes above New Bridge in the Dart valley, running upstream to Aish Tor. Incredibly, there was only one previous record for the butterfly here – it seemed that no one had actually explored the area for butterflies, despite the presence of a large riverside car park and tourist information centre below at New Bridge. This turned out to be one of the strongest High Brown Fritillary populations in the UK.
July wobbled, alternating between weather moods. The Purple Emperor season came, stuttered and went. The best I saw of it was in Hartley Wood, near Oakhanger in East Hampshire, where several males were flying over thicket-stage conifer plantations choked with sallows. The same plantations had held Pearl-bordered Fritillaries and huge colonies of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries in the mid- to late 1970s. A few years later the woods changed hands; the new owners slaughtered the sallows and proceeded to run the woods for an intensive commercial pheasant shoot, and tolerated no visitors. At that point my relationship with Hartley Wood ended. It had fallen into darkness.
August proved to be the best of the summer months, though not without spells of adverse weather. The second brood of the Holly Blue appeared in fair numbers, though way down on the spring showing. The butterfly was now spiralling into decline. A few days on the south Devon coast in early August picked up a sizeable immigration of Small White on Bolt Head, west of the Kingsbridge estuary, and a similar influx of Large White around Prawle Point, a little way to the east. Oddly, the two species had come in separately.
The most wonderful place discovered during 1991 was the steep east-facing downland slopes of High and Over, above the Cuckmere valley south of Alfriston in East Sussex. This was part of a new National Trust acquisition that year, the gloriously named Frog Firle Farm, purchased under Enterprise Neptune funding. We did not realise just how rich it was for wildlife until after it had been acquired, so the discovery of thriving colonies of Silver-spotted Skipper, Grayling, Adonis Blue and Chalkhill Blue on the downland, and important Diptera and dragonfly populations in the river valley, came as a most pleasant surprise. At the time, Silver-spotted Skipper was only known from a single site in East Sussex, Deepdene, diagonally across the Cuckmere from High and Over. Presumably the butterfly had colonised from there during the hot summers of 1989 or 1990. Frog Firle also produced a Painted Lady invasion, on August 29th. They were taking nectar from, and depositing eggs on, Red Star-thistle, a rare non-native annual that looks like a cross between a thistle and a knapweed and which is reputed to have been accidentally imported in mud on the boots of Napoleonic prisoners. It is known only from that part of the East Sussex downs.
All summer I had been delaying a monumental decision, whether to stay in Hampshire and carry on as a self-employed ecologist, as economic recession loomed, or to take up the offer of a full-time post with the National Trust, with the glorious title of Advisor on Nature Conservation. Heart said the former, head said the latter. One choice offered freedom in Nature coupled with the insecurity that accompanies it, the other the potential to get to the roots of some nature conservation issues, be part of a movement, and something approximating to security for the family. The job offer was dependent on moving house to be based from an office in Cirencester. For the first and only time in my life head won over heart. The wrench was horrific, particularly from Noar Hill. I have missed Noar Hill every day of my life since leaving Hampshire in March 1992, for my relationship with the place then slowly broke; the deep cynefin I had developed for the Selborne area shattered into a myriad fragments, each one piercing deeply.
A job is, of course, largely what you make it, and this was definitely a job of a lifetime, which meant it had to be for a lifetime too. The opportunities to help butterflies, their habitats and wildlife in general were enormous, and irresistible. But it was the impact on my personal relationship with Nature which mattered most, and that was exchanged for a relationship with nature conservation – and there is a difference. Crucially, most people seeking to work in nature conservation do so in order to develop their personal relationships with Nature. However, today's nature conservation profession scarcely enables that, with its obsession with money, politics, targets and systems – not to mention business meetings.
Once the decision had been made the agony intensified, for now there was no going back. Gradually I said farewell to each dear place around Selborne, each vista, each gap between trees, each sunken lane where Robins nest in twisted tree roots, each mossy tree stump, each sunset. It was as if I was going off to war. Worse, it felt as though the place was pushing me out. Places do that: they can suddenly boot you out – though perhaps other places, as unheard voices, are calling?
The year started well, with the driest January since 1837 and then a mild, racy February. My first butterflies of 1992 – Comma, Brimstone and Peacock, all within a whirligig minute on March 4th – were seen in a meadow destined to go under the A34 Newbury bypass. It was an apt experience for a nature conservationist. So 1992 was only the second butterfly season to open with a Comma, after 1975 – which had also been a year of monumental personal change. Then, forty years after my father's death, the family moved to Gloucestershire, where he had grown up. In a way we had come back. The first lesson, though, was how much cloudier the climate is in Gloucestershire, especially in spring.
The Janus-eyed Peacock was the butterfly of the spring of 1992. Males established territories in every sheltered sunny spot. A return visit to Noar Hill at the start of May, as the Duke of Burgundies were beginning to emerge, produced the highest count of spring Peacocks recorded there. Then, during June, Peacock larvae abounded in many of the nation's sunnier nettle patches. The Peacock went on to become Butterfly of the Year, for a huge summer brood materialised, assisted by warm June weather and a glorious July.
A wave of new places was encountered, near and far. In the Cotswolds, effort concentrated on assessing the status of the Duke of Burgundy, stimulated by a few fascinating days back in 1985. During the 1970s and 1980s the butterfly had enjoyed a boom era in the Cotswolds. I arrived there at the end of that era, when neglected grasslands were becoming too rough even for this long-grass specialist, and as the conservation backlash against this neglect was gaining momentum. There were still some good colonies, notably on the National Trust's Rodborough Common near Stroud, and at Cranham Common, Edge Common and Juniper Hill near Painswick. But everywhere the writing was on the wall for this little butterfly. One terribly isolated colony on the Trust's Sherborne estate near Northleach said it all. The colony was found in a pocket of limestone grassland where planted trees had failed, and was surrounded by miles and miles of intensive arable farmland. Keeping small, isolated fragments in suitable condition for a demanding butterfly is a massive challenge. We managed it, only to lose the colony during a series of rotten springs. Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were discovered in Cirencester Park Woods, and also on several of the limestone grassland commons around Stroud. The places were new, but the players familiar.
Further afield, each trip to somewhere new produced a revelation. A visit to Lewesdon Hill, the highest point in west Dorset, in mid-May coincided with the arrival of immigrant Red Admirals and Painted Ladies. The males set up territories in glades in the woodland there, perched appealingly on Bluebell flowers, and behaved despicably towards each other. The scarp slope of the Mendips between Crook Peak and Cheddar revealed sizeable colonies of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Grizzled Skipper, and some large Bracken stands which appeared to be in ideal condition for High Brown Fritillary. I could not wait to return during the High Brown season. The downs above Wrotham in north-west Kent, above the noisy M20, produced one of the best flights of Common Blue I have ever seen – seemingly because the foodplant, Bird's-foot Trefoil, had grown exceptionally well where arable fields had been sown with a conservation seed mix in an effort to restore chalk downland. A series of near-derelict orchards in a valley at Brockhampton in north Herefordshire revealed a colony of Wood Whites. The farm tenant here was elderly, merely tending a few beef cattle and sheep and leaning gently on the land. A little while later his son took over and the Wood Whites vanished. Such can be the difference between an old man's hand on the land, and that of a young man.
The inevitable burn-out occurred in early June. We were going to run an ecology training course in a hotel at Newby Bridge, at the southern end of Windermere, assembling on Sunday evening. Early that morning I set out for a day's butterflying in south Lakeland, visiting several of the limestone hills, where Pearl-bordered Fritillaries abounded and Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary and Northern Brown Argus were beginning their flight seasons. The day ended with a superb evening flight of Green Hairstreak on Meathop Moss, by Witherslack, where groups of up to eight were seen spiralling together over birch scrub. Later, they ascended into Scots Pine trees to roost. The first Large Heaths of the year were emerging, and all was well with the world. The following day, which was dull and lifeless, we had to climb up one of the Coniston fells, leaden-footed in my case. Not even the discovery of a little colony of Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries in a boggy flush 220 metres up managed to raise my energy levels. That evening there was a lecture on multivariate analysis, and sleep blissfully descended.
June steadily bettered itself. At midsummer the Lakeland high fells called, and they meant business. The National Trust owns or leases most of the mountain tops haunted by the Mountain Ringlet. At the time next to nothing was known about this lovely dark butterfly – where it occurred, how it was doing, what made it tick – that sort of thing – on my patch, on my watch; it was time for action. Most butterfly enthusiasts make the effort to see the Mountain Ringlet maybe two or three times in a lifetime, visiting a couple of renowned localities where access is relatively easy, but in the early 1990s the species began to generate some interest. Amongst that disparate but coalescing body of people was John Hooson, the National Trust's ecologist for the Lake District. Hooson should have been born a mountain goat, for he will seize any excuse to ascend any mountain, preferably at speed. The secret of working with such people is to insist on leading the way, so that they move at your (much slower and more rational) pace. Hooson and I spent two glorious days up on the Langdale Pikes, seeking the butterfly and asking questions of it. I wanted to follow the females, and discover where they lay their eggs, as an entry point towards understanding the insect's ecology. Hooson, an ace botanist, wanted to look closely at the vegetation characteristics of breeding areas. We covered a vast area, from Blea Rigg to Sargeant Man on the first day, and on the second day up the Mickleham Beck valley, up Stake Gill, over boggy Langdale Combe, up Mansey Pike, Buck Pike and Rosset Pike to Angle Tarn, and then to Tongue Head and Ore Gap, and to the summit of Bow Fell, before descending past Three Tarns and White Stones, down The Band and out through Stool End Farm. Those names rightly imply exhaustion. The Langdale Pikes are not for the fainthearted.
We found Mountain Ringlet colonies scattered seemingly at random over the vast expanses of Mat-grass grassland that characterise the less boggy or stony ground of the high fells. It seemed to occur in highly localised colonies separated by large areas of unoccupied terrain that appeared to be suitable. Now that's not logical, butterflies are not randomly distributed. The few eggs we saw being laid were placed in dry warm spots where there was an underlay of Sheep's Fescue grass amongst myriad tussocks of Mat-grass. Hypothesis: Does this butterfly require a mixed grass sward, do the larvae start feeding on the finer Sheep's Fescue before moving on to tough old Mat-grass? Butterflies are forever inspiring hypotheses, but are loath to reveal answers.
Two days later, twitching with anticipation, I was on the Bracken slopes of the Mendip escarpment at Cross Plain, south of Winscombe. There, notably above Kingswood, was some of the best-looking High Brown Fritillary habitat I had seen in years. I was going to rediscover Britain's fastest-declining butterfly in the Mendips, in my native Somerset! The butterfly was out in numbers in the West Country, my timing was perfect. Sure enough, as I came out from the trees innumerable large golden fritillaries were skimming fast over the Bracken, and visiting thistle flowers. There were hundreds of them. One by one they revealed themselves to be freshly emerged Dark Green Fritillaries. In disbelief I returned two weeks later, with the same devastating result. Even a pristine Clouded Yellow failed to lift the depression. Worse, in the intervening period I saw what proved to be the last of the New Forest High Browns, and was worried by what little I saw of the butterfly in the Teign valley, near Castle Drogo on Dartmoor. Suffice to say that the highs and lows of butterflying are considerable, as is the vulnerability of butterflies.
But the High Brown Fritillary would not be put down. A long weekend was spent surveying the cluster of colonies in the enchanting Heddon valley on the Exmoor coast, the only known West Country locality for this butterfly not covered by my surveys of 1989 and 1990. The High Brown Fritillary is one of our least child-friendly butterflies, being largely a denizen of steep slopes thickly afforested with dense brambly Bracken, but the family came too, and played on the beach at Woolacombe when not delighting along Heddon's rushing, gushing stream. The High Brown population here was clearly large, one of the strongest in the country. Three tiny colonies were found on the National Trust's Watersmeet estate, upstream of Lynton and Lynmouth, though these were in a parlous state and destined not to persist. Heddon was the place to concentrate conservation effort. We did, and it worked.
The Purple Emperor shone brilliantly from late June through to late July. Impressive flights were seen in Alice Holt Forest and in the woods to the south-west, near Oakhanger. In the Oakhanger woods I also saw my first ‘Black Admiral’ since 1983. These dark White Admirals are very intermittent and localised in appearance. Then, on July 27th, a male Emperor was seen flying over the downland summit of Beeding Hill on the West Sussex downs. What on earth was this forest insect doing flying over open downland on the crest of the South Downs, some way from any wood? Where had he come from – over barren cereal fields above Shoreham? And where was he heading? I knew the answer to that – Dragons Green, and it meant I was being called.
The Clouded Yellows had come in, and in a big way. More than 50 were seen over fields on the South Devon coast between Brixham and Kingswear, favouring south-facing slopes seeded with Rye Grass and White Clover, and grazed by cattle or sheep. The females were laying eggs on this agricultural White Clover, mainly on tiny isolated plants growing where the grasses were turning brown under advancing drought – in the hottest possible places. The same slopes were alive with Common Blues, also breeding on White Clover. Previously I had rather ignored these agricultural grasslands, but here in the South Hams they were clearly a useful butterfly habitat. Even more Clouded Yellows were seen on the Isle of Wight downs during early August. There, a constant stream of swift-flying males patrolled the lower south-facing slopes of the downs, squabbling terribly when two met.
But July belonged to the Peacock. The new brood began to appear in mid-July, and then fed up rapidly during a minor heatwave, such that most had entered hibernation by the end of the first week of August. They were wise, for the bulk of August was exceptionally poor – cool, sunless and wet, with just the odd reasonable day. The wonderful butterfly summer of 1992 was effectively cut off in its prime. In fairness, though, we were due a poor August.
The 1992 butterfly season had one last trick up its sleeve, before it was ended by an excessively wet November. On September 20th, during what the diary describes as a family blackberrying and beach cricket expedition to Middle Hope, just north of Weston-super-Mare on the Bristol Channel coast, a Monarch butterfly floated around us in Woodspring Priory car park, before batting off in a huff. And it was the size of a bat too, though faded and battered. The children were unimpressed, even by the likelihood that this giant of a butterfly had crossed the Atlantic in the wake of a mid-September gale. They wanted blackberries. The odd thing was that 1992 was not a known Monarch autumn; none had been recorded before this particular sighting, and very few subsequently. But butterflies specialise in the sudden and unexpected, so much so that it is wise to expect the unexpected.
Yet another mild winter ushered in the 1993 butterfly season. A visit to Devon on February 24th found hedges flushed with bright green Hawthorn leaves and starred with white Blackthorn and golden sallow blossom. The first butterflies took to the air on March 8th. Mine was a Peacock, which was hardly surprising, as this butterfly had been numerous in 1992.
March was dry and mild, April all over the place. One of the few reasonable days in April was the 24th, when I found myself on Meathop Moss in south Cumbria. The lady who walks the butterfly transect there was leaving as I arrived. She had just counted 38 Green Hairstreaks along the transect route. I ended up feeling that she should have been sent back to do it properly, for I counted 100 in eleven minutes around young birch bushes along the southern edge of the nature reserve, and went on to count 213 in 25 cloudy minutes in a walk across the edge of the open moss. That was the best Green Hairstreak display I had ever seen, and the butterfly was clearly not fully out. The diary remarks: They were all so beautifully fresh, emerald green and dark. Several were seen taking nectar from Cranberry flowers, no other plant being in flower. Shortly afterwards the Green Hairstreak emerged in unusually good numbers back in the Cotswolds, and elsewhere. Why, we know not, but it was definitely the butterfly of the spring – and of the year.
On one of the few pleasant days that May produced, I visited Halse Combe on the National Trust's vast Holnicote estate, near Porlock in Somerset, for the first time. I knew the landscape, for my Uncle Percy, the children's author J P Martin, had lived nearby, at Timberscombe. Heath Fritillaries were fluttering everywhere, the males roaming in loose packs through unfurling Bracken fronds in search of freshly emerged females. Groups of these exquisite black and amber butterflies were feeding greedily on Common Tormentil and Lesser Stitchwort flowers. When an afternoon breeze sprang up, they drifted down the slope to congregate for an evening bask in a rush-filled hollow along a stream that murmurs sweet nothings down the valley bottom. They looked in flight like a dark version of the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary, though more graceful, with a gentle skimming flight. Along the gorse-lined path that runs along a mid-slope contour in this hot, steamy moorland-edge combe, male Green Hairstreaks were tussling with each other.
In early June I was back up in south Lakeland, to help with another nature conservation training course at Newby Bridge. Again, the course assembled on a Sunday evening, allowing a full day's butterflying around Morecambe Bay. This time I was wiser, pacing myself better, though I still visited Warton Crag, Beetham Fell, Yewbarrow, Latterbarrow and Meathop Moss. I had visited most of these sites on the corresponding Sunday the previous year, but the butterfly season was running later this time. In contrast to 1992, Pearl-bordered Fritillary was still at peak season, whilst its cousin the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary was only just beginning to emerge that day; on Meathop Moss, the Large Heath had not started, though the Green Hairstreaks were still numerous, if terribly old, faded and grey. Two females were watched laying their eggs on Cranberry. Two days later, over on Arnside Knott Rabbit pressure had increased alarmingly during the 1992 drought and was now threatening the future of the Duke of Burgundy colony on the low hill to the west of the Knott, known as Heathwaite. Indeed, what had been quite a strong colony eight years ago was in the process of dying out, owing to a dramatic increase in the Rabbit population. There was little that could be done.
In mid-June, a visit to one of the top butterfly sites in the UK, the MOD's vast holding of chalk grassland and scrub at Porton Down, north-east of Salisbury, found butterfly populations at a very low ebb. A wet week had knocked out the spring butterflies, and the high-summer species were waiting for the weather to improve. We saw about 20 per cent of the expected butterflies, and were reduced to searching for Dark Green Fritillary larvae hiding under Hairy Violet clumps – their larval feeding marks are salient and fairly diagnostic.
The weather improved at the very end of June, producing three hot summer days. Drop everything and go up north, for the Mountain Ringlet! Unfortunately, the weather did the dirty on us, or rather the forecast did – the forecast mini-heatwave confined itself to southern Britain, while the north descended into fog and bog. A few miserable-looking Mountain Ringlets were walked up during a long wander over Wrynose Breast to Cold Pike and Pike o’Blisco and back. Then a chilly mountain wind sprang up. It was time to abandon the Lakes, albeit after kicking up a few chilled Large Heaths on Meathop Moss. The truth is that Lakeland offers the best butterflying in Britain when midsummer is kind, and the worst when it isn't.
In early July, down at Site X, the Large Blue reintroduction site, two of us bumped into old Arthur Brown, tenant farmer. A Dartmoor man born and bred, he leant over a rickety gate one evening, spat once or twice, and offered his perspective on the Large Blue's fortunes there over the years.
‘It wur all right back-along,’ he related in slow drawl, ‘so long as we wur burning the gorze and doing everything that comes natural to a varmin’ man, if you know what I mean like.’
I didn't, and neither did colleague Nigel Adams.
‘The best year it evurr 'ad was after we'd spread basic slag [a cheap fertiliser] over the whole [adjective deleted] place!’
This was actually true, though only because that incident coincided with ideal spring and summer weather for the butterfly and its fastidious caterpillars – the fertiliser went on to cause significant damage.
Old Arthur continued, with a twinkle in his eye: ‘We had butturrflies coming out of my backside!’
Then he paused, whilst our tongues recovered from a severe biting, before continuing: ‘Then there was a lot of thissing and thatting, if you know what I mean like.’
We didn't, and inquired, so he continued: ‘Well, they asked us to do this, so we did that for 'em but it wurrn't no good. No, they says, it's this we wants not that, so we did that for 'em but they didn't like that, they wanted this. And we went on and on thissing and thatting till the cows came home and [adverb deleted] milked themselves. Then they stopped us burning the furze, [noun deleted] knows why!’
There was a lengthy pause before he reached his climax, ‘and the bugger went and died out!’
Reading between the lines, Nigel, a wise countryman from farming stock himself, and I both rather suspected that the thissing and thatting might have not involved doing what was actually being asked. Tentatively, one of us suggested it, and were promptly treated to a long shaggy dog story about how one of his sons, ‘boys’ he called them, lost a leg in an accident involving a tractor, a Fordson Major or a Davey Brown 910 – Arthur couldn't remember which.
The interview culminated with the threat of a major revelation:
‘'Ere, let me tell 'ee about the time I sent the vicar's daughter home with 'er knickers in 'er handbag.’
At that point, Nigel and I exited hurriedly.
This may or may not be a fair account of how, and indeed why, the original UK race of the Large Blue died out at Site X back in 1979. Shortly after this most memorable of meetings old Arthur took to his bed with a bottle of Scotch and announced that he was buggered. All of Dartmoor attended his funeral. We shall not see his likes again. Professor Jeremy Thomas, whose life has been devoted to the conservation of the Large Blue, may be able to tell this tale with a finer degree of resolution.
By the end of a July which the weathermen irritatingly termed ‘changeable’ I had managed to see 51 species of butterfly. The diary states: Sounds impressive, but isn't, as I've only walked up Lulworth Skipper and Large Heath, seen 30 seconds’ worth of Wood White, seven Mountain Ringlets, one Adonis Blue (in rain), etc. I've hardly seen any females laying eggs. Never substitute quality for quantity.
August tried hard, but butterfly populations were badly reduced by a gale mid-month. Before that, I spent three days surveying the National Trust chalk grasslands on the North Downs escarpment between Shere, east of Guildford, and Reigate. Many of these slopes had been severely damaged by excessive Rabbit grazing during the drought summers of 1989, 1990 and 1992. On the thin soil slopes the grasses had been grazed out, so that the only vegetation cover that remained consisted of the aromatic herbs that Rabbits avoid and the more prickly or toxic varieties of scrub. Of course, in the absence of a tight grass cover, the chalky soil became a perfect seedbed for scrub seedlings. This explained how the downs scrubbed up so badly after Rabbit populations were lost to myxomatosis during the 1950s. Worse, we were wanting to graze these slopes with stock, though they essentially needed browsing (to control scrub) rather than grazing (to regulate coarse grasses). Eventually we learnt that time creates these problems, and that time alone solves them. Moreover, farm animals only effectively browse bushes after they have consumed the grasses; and even then they avoid some scrub species, notably Hawthorn, together with toxic seedlings.
Down at Dover, in mid-August, an immigration of Large Whites was taking place – loose groups of them were seen flopping low over the Channel and ascending the white cliffs, where the females immediately began to lay their eggs on the abundant Sea Cabbage that grows there, favouring the smaller, younger plants. The Dover area is a superb locality for the two cabbage whites, especially for the Large White. Advice to gardeners in the Dover district: net your brassicas, carefully. In those days, Langdon Hole, a chalk combe on the cliff above Dover harbour, was dominated by impenetrable Tor-grass, tall, dense and full of the dead blades of years gone by. The Lulworth Skipper would have loved it, but was not known to cross the Channel from the distant Calais downs and occurred in England no nearer than Swanage. Moreover, we knew from historic records that this had been a rich site for short-turf butterflies and orchids. No farmer was interested in running stock there, not least because this was cereal country. We decided to fence the cliff tops and introduce our own grazing animals, native-breed ponies, which thrive on Tor-grass. The practical work was done by Jimmy Green, a big-hearted cockney bruiser who had become the National Trust's first warden there, probably as a calling. There was nothing Jimmy would not do for his patch. Gradually he tamed Langdon with his bare hands, including its vertiginous Tor-grass. Jimmy, who struggled to tell a buttercup from a daisy, is one of the many unsung heroes of nature conservation.
Steadily, a combination of cold nights and pulses of heavy rains brought the 1993 butterfly season to a premature end, though the odd Red Admiral persisted until around Bonfire Night, the traditional end of the butterfly season. The year ended with something approximating to a white Christmas, though the light dusting had melted by the time the turkey came out of the oven.