This is a quick roundup of some of my favourite insect encounters of 2018 – there are some beautiful and highly varied species in the UK which reward the close observer!
2018 in Insects
butterfly
2017 in Butterflies
Like the bees in my last post – butterflies are summer’s companions. Whilst the bees add movement and sound, their gentle buzz providing the background to many a summer’s day, the butterflies are all about the flair and colour.
Below are a few of my favourite encounters as we moved through 2017.
Green hairstreak – Callophrys rubi
This is a species I have only ever seen briefly before, flitting in the low grasses as we walked The Ridgeway through Oxfordshire a few years ago. A hunt around Barnack Hills and Holes in May soon turned up a hawthorn shrub with several males standing guard over their patches of territory. This one was settled on an unopened flower bud, poised and ready to spring into the air as soon as another flew past and questioned his ownership of this space. You can read more about this encounter in this blog post!
Green-veined white – Pieris napi
With the exception of a couple of rarer species, it is easy to overlook our white butterflies as most people view them as pests in the garden. But like almost anything – they’re beautiful when viewed in their own right and on their own merits. My favourite part of this photograph is those chequered blue eyes as this butterfly feeds on forget-me-not flowers at Treswell Wood.
Small pearl-bordered fritillary – Boloria selene
We were walking through the dunes and forest at Newborough in Anglesey in May and spotted this static shape at the side of a path – a small pearl-bordered fritillary resting on the seedhead of a plantain. It’s rough brown textures gave it excellent camouflage. This species is widespread across the UK but only occurs in discreet colonies, commonly in the clearings in deciduous woodland but also marshland and moorland further north.
Ringlet – Aphantopus hyperantus
This is a common species of grassland and woodland habitats, but one which always delights me. The veins in the soft-brown wings are such good parodies of those found on the leaves it settles amongst, and the five eye spots are striking. This photo was taken at the Hills and Hollows behind Grantham, the butterfly sheltering amongst the grass on a windy afternoon.
Marbled white – Melanargia galathea
This white is actually more closely related to the browns than the other whites, despite name and appearance. It is a species I usually associate with the counties of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire as these are where I have encountered them most often on walks and surveys, so it was lovely to find a healthy population down the road in Bedford Purleius. This was taken in the meadow close to the carpark, along with the silver-washed fritillary pictured below.
Burnet moth – Zygaena sp.
Technically not a butterfly but a dayflying moth, I felt I had to include this photograph. This was taken at Lolly Moor – a Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserve – when I called by this year. The marsh helleborines were my main aim but there were many other orchids and these burnet moths were bouncing between them. This is one of the five-spot burnet moths, but I am unsure whether the ‘regular’ or the narrow-bordered. Any tips welcomed!
Small copper – Lycaena phlaeas
Some years I see this delicate little butterfly everywhere but others it is a real treat to encounter. Sadly 2017 was the latter – the only time I came across this species was whilst walking on a path above the Thames in Oxfordshire. The set-aside margins in the fields were particularly species-rich, drawn from the local wildflower meadows, and this was one of several species of butterfly enjoying the flowers on the day we were there.
Silver-washed fritillary – Argynnis paphia
This was a rather ragged specimen but its grace and presence was un-diminished – they stood out a mile flying alongside the marbled whites in the meadow at Bedford Purleius. This is our largest fritillary species in the UK and gets its name from the streaks of silver on the underside of the wings.
Wall brown – Lasiommata megera
A walk from Cheddar up the gorge to the quarry at the top rewarded me with this butterfly. The wall used to be much more common across the UK but suffered severe declines and now has a much smaller distribution. This is certainly the first time in a number of years I have come across this butterfly.
Common blue – Polyommatus icarus
Taken at sunrise in Muston Meadows, this common blue had spent the night roosting on the seedhead of a black knapweed and was waiting for the morning rays to warm it before taking to the wing. These little blue butterflies are abundant within the grasses, feeding particularly on the bird’s foot trefoils and other meadow wildflowers.
Red admiral – Vanessa atalanta
The last butterflies I saw in 2017 were those set to see out the winter in their adult form – the red admirals, small tortoiseshells and peacocks. Ivy flowers provide an abundant source of nectar for these late-flying species and they joined the bees and hoverflies on the flowers beside Grantham Cemetery.
2016 in Butterflies
I thought I had probably seen my last butterfly of 2016 when I started to put together this collection for 2016 – only to see a peacock flitting around on my lunchtime walk yesterday. Sunny weather or disturbance can bring out some of our hibernating species during the winter so the ‘season’ never truly ends!
Willow flowers (or Vegetable Goslings)
Willows (Salix genus) are one of the earliest flowering tree species in the UK and are a fantastic nectar source for early pollinators such as bumblebees and butterflies. These trees are dioecious which means that there are separate male and female trees which can be distinguished by their flowers. Another more commonly known example of a dioecious tree would be the holly – only the female trees bear the red berries. One of the traditional names for willow flowers was ‘vegetable goslings’ which seems a perfect description to me!
The flowers are quite unusual when compared with a simple flower such as a buttercup which follows the classic textbook diagram. Willow flowers are catkins – these are spikes of numerous tiny flowers rather than each catkin representing a single flower. Each of the yellow-tipped spikes in the male flower is one of the stamens and there are generally two or more of these to each individual flower within the catkin – the number varies with species. The same is true, although less easily illustrated, for the female flowers which have two or more stigmas per flower.
The male and female flowers appear at the same time in order that the pollen from the male flowers is able to fertilise the female flowers. The flowers are quite different from one another in appearance and, side by side, it would be easy to assume that a male and a female willow tree were two different species.
The willow flowers are an excellent source of nectar for early pollinating species, such as queen bumblebees which have emerged from hibernation and are establishing nests, or the early Nymphalidae butterflies which hibernate through the winter.
Brimstone butterflies – the perfect harbinger of spring
Brimstone butterflies are the perfect harbinger of spring. They are typically the first butterfly seen in most years – excepting the occasional tatty small tortoiseshell or peacocks – and they always look pristine. Perhaps the connection with spring is so strong because they confirm our own perception of the first spring day – they need the warmth and clemency of sun and still blue-skies in February or March to take to the wing.
I saw my first brimstone of 2014 a couple of week ago but they were out in abundance last Sunday – settling on the south-facing hedge in the garden to warm up and bask in the sunshine. A short drive across the Vale of Belvoir saw almost every hedge graced with at least one which bobbed and bounced around the periphery of the foliage.
The brimstone is one of five or six species of butterfly which hibernate in the UK. You may see much tattier and battered small tortoiseshell, comma and peacock butterflies at this time of year along with the occasional clouded yellow and, increasingly, the red admiral. All of these, excepting the brimstone and the clouded yellow, are in the Nymphalidae family – a group which includes many other familiar UK butterflies including the fritillaries and the browns. The brimstone is in the Pieridae family which also includes the whites.
Brimstone butterflies are a single brood species – the adult butterflies emerge in August and are on the wing, feeding and building up fat reserves, until they go into hibernation at the end of autumn. The butterflies, also called imago, re-emerge early in the spring to mate and begin their life cycle once more.
The comma and small tortoiseshell butterflies, in the Nymphalidae family, tend to have two broods in a year – that is the first batch of imago will mate and lay eggs which hatch and give rise to a second batch of imago in the same year. The red admiral has a single brood but the prevalence of imago is affected by migrating butterflies from the continent. The peacock has rather a similar life cycle to the brimstone.
It is always noticeable that the brimstone butterflies look pristine in spring, whereas the commas and small tortoiseshells often look much more battered and tatty. I was hoping this might be explained simply by the Nymphalidae butterflies being older – that is they had been on the wing longer in the previous season before hibernation, but the phenology doesn’t seem to bear this out for all. It could explain the particularly tatty comma and small tortoiseshell butterflies, if some of these are surviving stragglers from the first brood of the previous year.
There is still a difference in family between the brimstone and all of the other hibernating butterflies and I wonder whether the brimstone is simply a more structurally sound butterfly, with stronger wings which are less likely to deteriorate than the other species. The species is the longest living of the UK species, at a year, so the imago would need to be hard-wearing! I would be fascinated to know an answer to this if anybody can advise.
The brimstone butterflies feed on a range of nectar sources – as they are so early to emerge they rely initially upon long-flowering species such as dandelion, or early flowering species such as bluebell, cowslip and primrose. The key food plant in the autumn is thistles with a range of other species also used.
The larval food plant is surprisingly specific and not abundantly common – they require buckthorn or alder buckthorn. The species name for the butterfly eludes to this link – rhamni which refers to the latin for buckthorn – Rhamnus sp. This is a shrub which can be found in hedgerows and woodlands but is not nearly as common as other similar species such as hawthorn or blackthorn. I do not know of any buckthorn in the area but the presence of the brimstone butterflies clearly proves its existence! The comparative scarcity of buckthorn has been directly addressed by Butterfly Conservation in the past with planting programmes to increase their presence within landscapes and this has had a positive effect on the brimstone populations.
The female is much paler than the male – I saw one in the distance on Sunday which I at first through to be a large white until I crept closer and saw the distinctive veined, contoured folded wing which looks so much like a leaf.
Butterflies and wildflowers at Robert’s Field
Last weekend we managed a flying visit to Robert’s Field, a small nature reserve managed by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust just off the A1 about 20 miles to the south of Grantham on a minor road between Holywell to Pickworth.
This site is a limestone grassland which has been restored with a lot of effort and dedication by the Trust following the damage caused to this ancient meadow through conifer planting in the 1960’s. The work is ongoing but the result already is a wonderfully diverse limestone grassland with a wide range of wildflower species and simply teeming with butterflies.
The site is accessed along a minor road and the meadow is approximately flanked by woodland on either side – it would be fascinating to go along one evening and see what bats could be recorded as the juxtaposition of woodland and such invertebrate rich, species rich grassland is likely to be perfect for a range of species including the noctule, pipistrelles and myotis species. Hopefully there will be a report on this to follow!
The view across the reserve was dominated by colour, from the lesser and greater knapweed, the scabious, the creeping thistle and the ladies bedstraw set against the soft brown of dried grass heads and the already-rattling brown seed-cases of yellow rattle. More delicate limestone species were to be found lower in the sward; the incredibly delicate eyebright and gently nodding harebell, creeping restharrow and common centaury.
The star species would have to be the pyramidal orchids which scattered themselves humbly throughout the grassland with the rest of the wildflowers; my particular favourite was an all-white specimen close to the exit.
Another interesting species was the knapweed broomrape; this looks to the unaccustomed eye rather like the dead flowering stem of another plant, perhaps even an orchid. In fact, this is the plant very much alive. Most plants are green from the chlorophyll which is the pigment critical to the capture of carbon through sunlight, effectively providing the plant with its food. Broomrapes are one of a number of parasitic species – the yellow rattle being another example – which tap into the roots of other plants and steal the nutrients from them. They are this brown colour because they simply do not need to make chlorophyll, they obtain their food through theft rather than thrift! There are a number of broomrape species in the UK and they do vary on which species they parasitise. This is the knapweed broomrape and its host plant was present in abundance on this site.
The main reason for our quick stop-off however was to look for the butterflies. It was cooling and slightly breezy by the time we arrived with the result that many of the butterflies were resting low to the ground; walking along the track scattered them to the air in 2’s and 3’s with every footfall. This is, without a doubt, one of the most butterfly-filled fields I have ever walked through!
Meadow browns, gatekeepers and ringlets were present in profusion, along with countless small skippers which flitted from flower to flower. It seemed that every other grass stem had attached the cocoon of a six-spot burnet moth, often with the remains of the pupae still visible, with the result that every other flower seemed graced with one of these beautiful day flying moths. But the species we had really come to see kept flying away across the field, sighted only as a large light-brown butterfly which put 30 metres between us with ease on its powerful wings. Eventually, on the loop back towards the car, we finally found one stationary on a purple flower of knapweed. The dark green fritillary. This is one of the nine UK fritillary species (if you count the Duke of Burgundy) and is one of the more common although it was considered to be extinct in Lincolnshire until recently. There is some debate over whether the dark green fritillaries in Robert’s Field were introduced or whether they have made their own way to the site, but their presence amongst the more common species goes some way towards restoring the number of butterflies which were once present on this site; 25 were recorded in 1950 although another 5/6 were thought to occur. This list included chequered, dingy and grizzled skippers, brown argus, Duke of Burgundy, green hairstreak, pearl-bordered and silver-washed fritillaries and marbled white. The green hairstreak still has an inland stronghold on this site and, although its flight period is over for this year, I am hoping to go in search of them at the end of May next year!
The dark green fritillary is, like all of the family, a dappled chequerboard of black and orange with no dark green to be seen when the butterfly rests with wings open upon a flower. The dark green which gives this butterfly its name comes from the underside of the wings where a dark green tinge, almost like a dusting, colours the lower portions of the wings closest to the body. This species can often be found feeding on thistles and knapweed whilst the larval food plants are violets such as dog-violet.
Their key flight period is the first 3 weeks of July but they can be seen on the (increasingly tattered) wing into early August so there is still time to see them this year!
To read more about Robert’s Field, visit the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust web page here; you can also find information on where to find the site. Access is through a wooden gate towards the northern end of the field, next to a pull-in which can fit a couple of cars. Be careful not to park on the grassland verges which are also fantastically diverse wildflower sites in their own right and worth an inspection if time allows.
Purple Emperors in Fermyn Woods
The purple emperor (Apatura iris) is not the rarest butterfly in the UK – that rather dubious accolade would go to the high brown fritillary although there are far too many other species, such as the black hairstreak, in close contention.
But the purple emperor is one of the largest and certainly one of the most impressive. It is a woodland butterfly, favouring deciduous woodlands with a dominance of oak or beech although a good supply of willow, the larval foodplant, is another requirement. Perhaps it is this habitat, the high treetops in mature woodland glades, which makes the species all the more regal as it descends and deigns to be appreciated before ascending once more.
They are found in mature woodlands through southern England with occasional colonies elsewhere in the country and, luckily, one of these is only a 40 minute drive from Grantham.
We took a drive down to Fermyn Woods on Saturday, arriving around 10am, and were lucky enough to spot a male purple emperor settled upon a damp digging to the side of the trackway within 100m of the car. The males are seen most frequently as they come to ground to take moisture, nutrients and salts from damp ground and animal droppings – a behaviour which spoils the regal image just a little.
The remainder of the time, the adults spend high in the canopies, feeding upon the aphid honeydew and this is generally where the females will stay – they could be seen occasionally breaking the canopy cover before returning and remaining on high.
The purple emperor is very darkly coloured, almost black, with patterning of white and orange on the top of the wings. The underside are a magnificent rich marbled motif of brown and white, almost as spectacular as the open wings. But when the light catches the wings of the males, the reason for their name becomes apparent as a sheen of purple washes across the wings, marking this out as one of the most spectacular butterflies you are likely to encounter.
As we walked amongst other enthusiasts watching the paths and the canopies, we saw another two in flight, along with many other butterflies including white admirals, ringlets, countless skippers and speckled woods.
The best time to see the purple emperors is around now – the peak date for sightings is given as the 13th July – and they are generally to be found on the ground during the morning when the sun begins to heat through. The ride which runs from east to west through the middle of the woods was the place to be although the woods have a network of paths which are worth exploring for their range of wildflowers including meadowsweet, perforate St John’s wort, hedge woundwort and red campion.
Grantham Ecology 