During Wind And Rain - Watching Butterflies

To badly paraphrase that well known lepidopterist Jane Austen “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Northern man in possession of a good guide book, must be in want of a butterfly.”

I read somewhere that the reason butterfly watching was so popular in the Victorian era was partly due to the lazy hot days of summer when the well clad gentleman in linen knickerbockers (or occasionally a lady in fetching taffeta) would roam the sweet vernal grass meadows near the homestead, swishing a butterfly net with abandon while dreaming of cricket, and a return home on the Penny Farthing to an afternoon tea on the terrace, maybe with the vicar. How things have changed.

July 2023 has arrived. I look out of the window. Strong winds and grey skies with rain so heavy you could launch a boat in the resulting flood. Not ideal weather for butterfly watching then? Well, yes it is, in some ways it is perfect. 

Hodder's Combe - where the sunlit butterflies begin

As I am that Northern man of Austen's  my target butterfly for this July has been the silver washed fritillary. Before dear reader you continue with this narrative I may as well confess to having failed spectacularly to see a single silver washed fritillary all year. Stop now if your only interest is polarised in Argynnis paphia. You will read no account here of this parfumier valentino of the woodland glade. However if I may entice you further, could a white admiral and maybe a large skipper pique your interest to continue?

I drove down the M5 in Somerset, en-route to Hodder's Combe in the Quantocks. The rain was so heavy that even on the fastest setting the deluge came down quicker than the windscreen wipers could wipe the rain away. Driving half blind we crawled along a flooded motorway where, as I passed by Sedgemoor Services at steady 30mph, I thought to myself "why on earth am I doing this?" The simple answer was the weather forecast suggested rain until noon followed by glorious sunshine for the rest of the day. Given butterflies have to feed and tend to fly only when it is sunny, my thought was they'll rest up in this rain but as soon as the sun emerges they'll be on the wing. I was right, and the butterflies came in good numbers.

Comma : Can you see me?

After a three quarters of an hour walk up the Combe, during which the rain finally stopped though it remained cloudy, I was now in position. I waited no longer than five minutes, not another living soul about, it was so peaceful. The sun emerged from behind the clouds and the butterflies began flying all around me. First the meadow browns who appeared as if by magic, ten maybe twenty of them flying haphazardly with their weak flappy flight. Followed then by a number of large white strongly flying in a purposeful way and then half a dozen comma, again out on the wing enjoying the sun. As the sun intensified out came half a dozen red admiral and gatekeeper, a trio of large skipper and a single common blue flitted and flapped between all this activity heading towards a large mound of bramble. I followed and noted this large bramble patch was a meeting place for the species. As happens when watching butterflies if the sun disappeared even for a short while all the activity would end and those butterflies I'd been watching seconds earlier would simply disappear as if by silent command. When the sun returned, this activity would resume. I became absorbed by this, a special moment to be in and amongst all this activity and behaviour by insects just getting on with their life while simply ignoring my presence. A wistful thought that if I were not there they'd be doing this activity anyway. The World revolves.

I did make an interesting observation though, the role bracken (Pteridium) played in all of this emergence and disappearance. Bracken is much maligned for its invasive and tick laden properties. My observations however showed how beneficial brackens' open domed growth habit is to butterflies, to species who would not normally be associated with this fern. Many individuals landed on the highest sunniest bracken fronds and rested, wings open, stationary, simultaneously warming up and drying out before heading off and out of sight. Every species I saw there on that visit used bracken as a resting site to a greater or lesser extent, often resting there with motionless wings for minutes at a time. There is a risk to all this of course as while they are so conspicuous butterflies are more visible to predation but the benefit of being out in the open while adjacent to dense vegetation they could quickly disappear into must outweigh the risk.  In all I spent two hours here exploring what this place had to offer. Sadly the silver washed fritillary did not show though they are here and I'd recently read that brown hairstreak have been discovered here. I'll leave these species for the next time, it was after 4pm now, activity was tailing off, time I headed home.

Comma

Gatekeeper

Normal meadow brown above and a dark form male with sex bands visible below

Female large white. A little like woodpigeons which because they are common and deemed a pest are very much overlooked, though both bird and butterfly I think are stunning.

Large skipper

Red admiral above and below.

Female small white on a nettle above and on herb robert below.

That was during the week and so following my failure to see silver washed fritillary on the following Saturday I headed into the woodland area of Shapwick Heath NNR after recent reports of silver washed fritillary flying. 

This time I was taking a real punt given the weather had turned decidedly autumnal in feel, cool, torrential rain showers but now accompanied by 40-50 mph gusting winds. This weather was so out of season the Saturday Market in the nearby city of Wells, where I'd gone to first thing, had  been cancelled. Undeterred my revised plan was to venture into the most sheltered rides of the oak woodland at Shapwick and just observe what if anything appeared as and when the frequent rain showers were replaced with sunshine. 

Shapwick Heath NNR - white admiral country.

I could not have had a better afternoon. In a similar way to Hodder's Combe if the sun disappeared then the butterflies disappeared. But, when the sun did emerge the rides erupted with life. Not just butterflies but tens or even hundreds of dragonflies and damselflies, hover flies and a myriad of insects I couldn't identify. I could identify unfortunately the hundreds of mosquitoes that also flew in the sunshine, I was covered in them and their bites. A real downside here, not pleasant at all and I still bear the scars.

While frequently distracted by other insects I kept focussed on butterflies whose abundance was enhanced by energetic activity by the many species now on the wing in the strong sunlight, before it all fell quiet again as the rain returned as it often did. I was getting used to this weather related cycle. 

A very obliging brimstone which despite its bright colour blended beautifully into these oak leaves.

A beautiful but pestilent deer-fly Chrysops spp. but not sure of the exact species.

Beautifully marked gatekeeper underside (above) and a different but equally lovely gatekeeper upper wings (below). The gatekeepers were everywhere, more plentiful than meadow brown.

Peacocks were everywhere too, such oddly out of place markings in the English countryside, almost tropical in looks.

Ruddy Darter (first thought common darter but I dismissed this or maybe it is)

This southern hawker clung motionless to this honeysuckle branch for fifteen minutes or more. At first I thought it might have been dead but then on my last visit it wasn't there. There were a lot of hawker species about, a few did that spectacular thing of flying right up very close to my face and then after hovering for a while looking at me, decided I wasn't any threat - nor prey - and buzzed off.  Fascinating behaviour and I'd love to know what they see and are observing.

I'm not seeing many speckled woods at the moment. This one was one of the few found resting on a fern.

Now we're getting to the white admirals. In this cooler weather they were flying really well but unsurprisingly a slower flight and much less fidgety than when I'd last seen them a couple of weeks earlier. I'm not sure whether it was just the weather but they were also much lower down perching around head height or gliding for short distances low along the track which is a behaviour many lepidopterists look for. The image below was more typical on this visit, horizontally straight wings on a bramble looking inconspicuous. Despite the quite wild wind in the high canopy down at ground level it was almost motionless. I'd made the correct choice to come here today, the butterflies were within easy sight and once again I had the site all to myself due presumably to the weather. During one of the more prolonged wet spells I stood quietly listening to the pitter-patter of raindrops. It's a sound I've loved since childhood.

All in all what these two visits to observe butterflies in poor weather has taught me is don't remain indoors bemoaning the inclement summer, head out and see what happens. I'd do that when winter birdwatching, so why not in the summer?  Would I have noticed the butterfly species using bracken as a sunning and drying perch if the weather had not been so changeable? Would the eruption of species simultaneously timing their flights with the sun's emergence have been witnessed if I'd stayed at home? I suspect not and it made for a fantastic immersive experience on both occasions. But I'll leave you with this female blackbird.

I was walking along a boardwalk back to my car when this female appeared. I stopped and she stopped then, after checking me over, she ignored me and hopped a few feet at a time towards me. I stood motionless watching her for what seemed an age. Then when she was around 12 feet from me she dived into the trackside and speared the fattest slug I've seen for a while, a slug much too heavy for her to fly away with.  Transfixed I watched her kill and repeatedly peck the slug for some time until having eaten a large part of it she finally managed to lift the slug remains and fly off, albeit under some difficulty. Whereto she went I have no idea as the torrential rain returned as she flew off, so I the happy wildlife watcher of these two days simply shrugged, pulled my coat a little tighter around me and walked off accompanied by the roar of thousands of raindrops crashing against leaves in the tree canopy. I was alone with my thoughts surrounded by nature at its finest.

Meadow Brown with more spots than it needs

Looking out of the bedroom window before 9am today a brimstone butterfly could be seen flying around the garden. I headed out to see if I could photograph this probable second brood individual. Of course by the time I got out there it had long gone and in its place a couple of holly blue butterflies were wafting about. We've had these in the garden for around ten years now and it amazes me as the only holly we have are two clipped pom-poms in one border. In the past I've watched them laying eggs on the holly leaves, size of holly tree doesn't matter then.

While I was out here then I had a wander around and saw a meadow brown feeding on one of the Helenium. Nice, we don't get that many in the garden though they are increasingly being seen.  Then I looked again. The black eye-spot on the wing contained two white spots. I did a double take, this was definitely not a gatekeeper, a similar looking species which does have two white spots on its black eye-spot. No this is definitely a meadow brown which should only have one white spot within the black eye-spot. This quite well worn individual was to be honest a little larger than normal. Was that significant? Are meadow browns with two white spots genetically a little larger than their species? Questions. 

At some angles the twin white spot were not visible, though this was simply the wing covering the second spot. I took a few more images then after reading up on the variability of meadow brown spots I confirmed in my mind it was this species but to be sure I got in touch with a friend by email attaching these images. He confirmed this was indeed a meadow brown quoting from the book The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland by Thomas and Lewington;

"in both sexes there is much variation in eye-spot and other markings"

He even sent me a photograph he'd taken a few years back of what is called a 'blind' ringlet - with uniformly brown wings showing no visible spots at all, a rare aberration on this usually spotty butterfly. A fine example of how variable some individuals can be in all species. I thanked him and left him to head off for the day to hopefully watch many purple emperor butterflies at Grafton Wood in South Worcestershire.

After yet more reading around I discovered that the prevalence of twin white spots on the meadow brown generally increases north of the Midlands. Though that's too simplistic. Of the four recognised sub-species they are localised ranging from the Scilly Isles and Cornwall to Ireland to Scotland and northern England with smaller localised variations elsewhere. Twin white spot meadow browns do occur further south, for example in Dorset these variations are rare but recognised. But this all tends to be localised presumably genetic populations and the spots may be of variable intensity or even missing.  What this individual was doing in a Somerset garden I'm not sure. Thinking about this however, we've had strong north west winds for days. Was this individual picked up elsewhere, caught in the slipstream and dropped into the garden? I'm not sure but it is one theory.

I'd not seen a two white spot meadow brown before and learning something new each day about butterflies is proving very energising and it is keeping me very much on my toes while providing a new impetus to my wildlife observations.

Saluting the White Admiral

I nearly didn't head off to go butterfly watching. After spending a whole day birdwatching at Slimbridge on the previous day I had planned for a leisurely Sunday to reflect,  recover and watch a little cricket.

However the one thing that is a certainty is that nature happens when nature wants it to happen. And so it is with butterflies. They are on the wing when they want to be on the wing not when I am at leisure to observe them. Following a leisurely morning then I roused myself, got into the car and arrived at Shapwick Heath just before 2pm. My quest today the white admiral (Limenitis camilla) butterfly. 

I visit the Avalon Marshes regularly although oddly I've not been down there for a few months. However eighteen months or so ago I took part in a Butterfly Conservation training day here. It was a chance conversation during that with one of the leaders in which she said Shapwick has a good colony of white admirals. White admirals are not common in Somerset as this is the western edge of their British range and so having never seen one before I made a mental note to return later that summer and fulfil that wish. Family and work commitments prevented my visiting last year and as I have weekends planned through to mid August this year, despite my desiring a quiet Sunday at home, I had just this one day available to visit the area in the hope of seeing white admiral on the wing before they stop flying.

From that conversation last year I had a vague idea where they could be found and my target search was therefore to be within this known area, slowly searching open sunny tracks where honeysuckle and bramble are plentiful - the former for egg laying and the caterpillar stages and the latter for the adults to feed. I set off and after nearly an hour of scanning every bramble and honeysuckle I could see nothing. I did find plenty of other interesting invertebrates to divert me but no white admiral. I had to stay focussed. I did though have time on my side as I'd been informed last year that here the white admiral is most active mid to late afternoon, though that is dependent on strong sunshine. Previous surveys had happened in the morning and for a long while it wasn't recorded until that is, as the story went, a butterfly surveyor was out just for a walk one late afternoon an spotted one

Having drawn a blank, I eventually came to a cross-path and while deliberating which way to go I saw a red admiral on some bramble flowers and then a comma. Not what I was looking for but nice nonetheless. I stopped to take some photographs. It was while taking these I noticed a large white butterfly being chased by something which looked sooty grey. Despite never having seen a white admiral before I knew this was it, though I couldn't be sure from this one sighting alone. They both flew very fast and it was the briefest of moments before they spiralled high up into the tree canopy and out of sight. I then spent a good while scanning the trees with my binoculars to no avail, it was nowhere to be seen. But success at last, I was in the right place at least. 

I stood scanning the brambles and trees for another ten minutes, nothing happened. By now the various bitey things had found me and the mosquitoes were really starting to have a good nibble. I was about to move off when a large white butterfly flew low left to right being chased by, yes, my first ever confirmed white admiral. I got a good look at it this time as it spiralled around the large white  before as in the previous sighting they disappeared off into the canopy. I have to say I didn't know white admirals were so aggressive or flew so fast, quite a contrast to the red admiral and comma quietly feeding on the brambles, I'd forgotten about them.

Once more I scanned the trees for activity - nothing. Had I imagined this? Well of course not, but two brief glimpses in twenty or more minutes was a little frustrating, exciting and frustrating in equal measure. Two visitors walked by asking what I was looking for and we had a chat but while we did the admiral didn't appear. Eventually (possibly thinking I'd made all this up) they left and I stood for another fifteen minutes being devoured by mosquitoes while absolutely nothing happened. I did note however on both times I'd briefly seen the admiral the sun had come out, it was one of those days of light cloud and sunshine.  Time to move on, I turned left onto a wide pathway.

As I'm trying to increase my knowledge of butterflies this year I'd read up a little before coming out. White admiral prefer sheltered sunny glades and trackways. They need bramble and honeysuckle as mentioned but also tall trees as they are used for resting away from predators, and presumably a good vantage point to watch me down below while inwardly laughing at my failed endeavours. I scanned yet more bramble. Even though this is early July many of the flowers had gone over with new fruit developing. I'm assuming this prolonged dry spell has brought forward flowering. Using my binoculars I looked down the ride, up into the trees, back where I'd come; nothing.

I'd been looking for over an hour and a half and by now I was beginning to think of moving somewhere else when at that moment the sun came out and right on cue a large white flew into vision, followed by, yes indeed a sooty grey looking butterfly in hot pursuit - but this time after chasing the large white away the white admiral flew in a wide circle before landing on some honeysuckle in front of me. I grabbed a quick photo before I then spent some time observing it with my binoculars. What a stunning butterfly and my first ever proper view, looking quite chocolate brown at this angle. They are also big, as big as the books say - and why wouldn't they be? Luckily this individual remained in view for a minute or so allowing me time to really take it in. Then as quickly it had arrived it was off, leaving me to inwardly digest what I'd seen.

I'd have been perfectly happy with this. Yes a brief view but I'd managed to achieve what I had set out to do. Yet there was more to come. 

The ride I was now on looked pretty nondescript, to our eyes at least, but obviously for a white admiral it is perfect. As I loitered hoping for another sighting a party of four visitors ambled towards me, it turned out they were on holiday from Scotland.  The two ladies wandered off but their menfolk were chatty and wanted to know what I was doing. I showed them the image I'd just taken and they were quite impressed, even more so when as we chatted a white admiral made a lovely 5 second loop-the-loop flypast right next to us, almost as if it was saying 'Ahhahh you're not looking now so I'm going to show off, bye'. 

By now the clouds were breaking a little more and the sunny spells were longer and more frequent. The two men ambled off and I was on my own again thinking of the behaviour I'd witnessed so far. There was a distinct pattern - the sun comes out - a few moments later a large white appears - and not every time but regularly the large white is then pursued by a white admiral and the whole performance ends with a flight into the trees and the admiral disappears. I'd now seen this charade a number of times. On one occasion when flying into the canopy twenty feet above me the white admiral settled on a leaf in full view. I managed to get some lovely views of this individual through the binoculars, and a handful of clear images, not bad considering  I was a good 30-40 feet away looking up. The markings are stunning. 

What I struggled to comprehend though was how many individual butterflies I had actually seen. I was now on my third area where I'd seen a white admiral flying, but was it the same one? I guess not as it was a few minutes walk between each of them. But they do fly over a large area.  

Eventually this individual in the tree was buzzed by a dragonfly and off it went. I wandered off further down the track and through my binoculars could see a white admiral low on a bramble. It took me a minute or so to get there just as it flew off and yes, into the tree canopy. Was this the same one as I'd just seen in the tree? I really don't know, though my inward thought is I'd seen possibly four individuals over five sites (one site was close to another therefore it is likely to be the same individual) during my time there.

I'd been here well over two hours and my poor arms were peppered with mosquito bites. Time to call it a day. Retracing my route I was stopped in my tracks by yet another white admiral happily feeding on a bramble in yet another area. I'd looked at this area a few times already, each time however nothing was showing. But now around 4pm the heat really was building, the sun was strong, and this lovely condition individual was very obliging.

I could have watched it for hours, fascinated too that a meadow brown which was feeding next to it. Not a threat then compared to the large white? I need to read up why white admiral and large white have these territorial scraps. Do white admirals squabble with other species? Does size play a part?

It really was time to go but this wasn't the last of it. Retracing my steps along the Sweet Track I'd been walking for ten minutes and had almost reached the end when a white admiral flew past me and landed only an arms length away on a bramble, giving me yet another wonderful view and this stunning image. That conversation eighteen months ago was spot on - mid to late afternoon is the best time for views in this part of the world. I'm also really getting into this butterfly watching, not least as I can have a lie in, saunter out after lunch and be rewarded in warm weather with stunning natural history encounters like this.

Bluethroat and Autumn Migration Is Underway

It has been a fantastic forty eight hours. A weekend of firsts for me and I'm not really sure which takes pride of place on my excitement podium, they are all equal in my experience and all thanks to knowledgeable friends and doing my homework.

As choosing a favourite from the weekend is impossible a chronological account seems appropriate. So lets begun with the white-spotted bluethroat (Luscinia svecica).

Every few month or so I catch up with some of my ex-colleagues from the BBC's Natural History Unit. We tend to choose a different venue each time with Slimbridge being the chosen venue on Saturday.  Two reasons for this. One friend is a life member and can get a guest in too and there's been a bluethroat resident here for a few weeks. I'm not a twitcher and so had no idea this subspecies was at Slimbridge, but another friend wanted to see this as he'd only ever seen them in Russia, never the UK. That I found amazing as he is possibly one of the best naturalists in the business (though he is too modest to accept this) and his knowledge is immense. It's why he used to present Natural History programmes and is in constant demand for articles. 

The four of us arrived for a 09.30 start. A fifteen minute walk got us to the Shepherds Hut area of Slimbridge where we could see a small group of people peering out from the view point. And there is was, the white spotted bluethroat, 200 metres away. On a twig.

I've got to the stage of my life of not wishing to be weighed down with kit while out and about and so yesterday I carried only my mobile phone and binoculars. The resulting photograph of the bluethroat is as a result, woefully inept. But it is a record. (NB : the arrow wasn't there on the day) 

But believe me it was there clinging onto a stick in what was quite an unpleasant wind, honest guv. Through binoculars and telescopes though it was quite stunning, a male, singing well too. But in many ways I found this quite sad. Reading the notice by the viewpoint it is a bird on its own waiting for a mate and has been at Slimbridge for some time. I checked, the last bluethroat confirmed  breeding in Britain was in 2016. They are regular passage migrants annually but for one to be holding territory in England is uncommon. That said this is the first time all four of us had ever seen one in the UK, and while I wished it could find a mate, as this is the third year it has been to Slimbridge, there's always hope for next year.

If I'm honest, and maybe I should not say this, after I'd watched this speck on a twig for five minutes I thought this is lovely but it's so far away I'm bored now. But there was lots of butterfly action going on along the seawall bank,  I made my excuses and left the core twitchers to stand around in the gale waiting for the bluethroat to re-emerge. For the next twenty minutes I busied myself with watching skippers (presumed small - chief ID friend suggested could be Essex but we'd need a better view to be certain), gatekeeper, marbled white, red admiral, comma, meadow brown and ringlets.

The bluethroat wasn't the only first bird for me. In total we spent eight hours at Slimbridge and along the way saw many species, one of which was a black-winged stilt, which I don't think I've seen before, but could be wrong there. Remarkably this was standing next to not only a ruff in almost summer plumage (it had lost its ruff) but half a dozen green sandpipers. As my encyclopaedia friend said either the green sandpipers and the ruff were non breeding birds, or they've finished breeding early. Either way they're on migration south already which is a sobering thought given it was July 1st and summer is yet to come it seems.

One of the friends isn't too knowledgeable a birdwatcher so it was great listening to my two other friends giving her instruction and tips - I re-learnt a lot myself as I've become rather rusty in recent years through lack of time to get outdoors other than snatched hours at a weekend.

To help her, we also kept a tally of what we'd seen at Slimbridge. Not a place I'd go to regularly as there are too many people visiting but it is fantastic for seeing birds in a well organised way, great for families too. 

Birds we saw at Slimbridge. BLUETHROAT, BLACK-WINGED STILT, ruff, spotted redshank, common redshank, kingfisher, hobby, green sandpiper, common crane, kestrel, great white egret and little egret, shelduck, pochard, teal, coot, moorhen, lesser whitethroat, goldfinch, sedge warbler, reed bunting, stonechat jackdaw, rook and carrion crow, juvenile wagtails, great spotted woodpecker, sand and house martin, swallow (oddly no swifts), house sparrow, starling, woodpigeon, stock dove, curlew, mute swan, greylag and Canada geese, black headed gull, avocet, black tailed godwit, mallard and I'm sure many others I've forgotten. I must carry a notebook!!

A wonderful day and the first time I've done a proper birdwatching day for years. This was followed on the following day, Sunday, with a very different day indeed, on the search for a white admiral butterfly. That's for the next posting.

Nightjar a-glow

There are some things which no matter how much time is spent, or how many hours absorbed in a task, or how many times a plan is hatched and re-enacted, the end product is zero. Though to be fair although the end product in this case was brilliant, capturing that brilliance on a camera was less than perfect. I'm talking of the European nightjar, Caprimulgus europaeus.

I've watched nightjar for many years now and they never cease to amaze me. For many of those years my preferred location was a well known site on the Mendip Hills in Somerset. Close to twenty five years ago now I visited this site with an excellent naturalist and BBC Natural History Unit cameraman, I was also friends with his partner who joined us. This was my first encounter with the fern-owl or goatsucker, just two of the many country names for this bird. In those days it was deemed acceptable to flick a white cloth in the air to attract a male nightjar intent on booting out any interloper to its territory. And we did just that mimicking the white tail feathers of the bird, though today this is very much frowned upon. However that flick and clap elicited what had been the very best and closest encounter with these deeply fascinating birds. Until that is last weekend which I'll come to.

Another site in the northern part of Somerset provides astonishing nightjar flying and churring but to be honest as it has a precipitous climb back down from the site in pitch darkness it is not one of my favourite locations. And so during the pandemic when we were prevented from going out I did a little research. Which brought me to the Quantock Hills in West Somerset.

I'm not going to name the site as somehow I feel the nightjar there will benefit being left to get on with their own world, though I later learnt that regular nightjar-evenings do happen here. 

It was early last year when Mrs Wessex Reiver and I did a reconnaissance visit arriving two or three hours before sunset. I had some basic instructions but this is a huge site of moorland, woodland, steep valley and everything in-between. With a picnic in the rucksack we wandered about the myriad of pathways aslant the hill. Nothing looked suitable in terms of habitat until we stumbled across a picnic bench. Unpacking the egg and cress sandwiches and ripe apple for desert it struck me while sitting here  "this looks as likely a spot as anywhere".  In the absence of a better idea we made use of the picnic bench and waited as the sun began to set. Half an hour after sunset we heard a brief churring at some distance, then followed by the contact 'choo-weep' call. There it was again. Walking towards the churring it became louder and clearer. We stopped, the churring stopped then as I'd hoped a clap-clap sound, another 'choo-weep' call and behind us from whence we'd just walked a male nightjar flew over the path silhouetted against the sky and away to churr at some distance. Success.

Now knowing where they are to be found we returned three or four times last year and on each visit the same behaviour happened in the same area in roughly the same sequence.

First there's a low volume short churr just before the sun sets. This is brief and often not repeated. It is possibly the male and female contact churring if they are brooding on the nest scrape, pair bonding as they swap positions. To be honest I don't know for sure. Nothing of real note happens until around 25 minutes after sunset.  Suddenly as if a switch is flicked on a churr just begins and lasts for minutes. Then it will stop with a whoop-whee-whoop call like an old fashioned turntable losing power mid track, followed by wing claps and then silence. I now know enough at this site to anticipate this is the male about to take flight. Mostly from the same area, over our heads and into some isolated trees some way off. From here churring can continue for ten minutes, before again a clap clap, whoop-whee-whoop and if we're lucky we'll see him disappear in flight towards the valley. 

That valley is interesting as on most of the occasions we visit we can hear up to half a dozen churring nightjar all around. Not all the time and of course some may be moving about, but certainly a small number are here. On one fine, warm and still evening I took a parabolic microphone to the site and gained some useful audio of the churring, mixed with the bells ringing in the village below. Quite atmospheric as the bells struck eleven.

On another evening last year unlike Coleridge who was disturbed by a Person from Porlock, we met a dogwalker from Bridgwater. A somewhat surreal experience talking to a stranger in near darkness with nightjar churring about all around us. He was visiting his mother and knew the area well from childhood. He mentioned that in years past the males would lek up on the high moor after leaving their territories across the Quantocks and in the valleys. I've not come across any literature of nightjar lekking but it seems plausible for this elusive and  intriguing bird as there is so much that remains unknown about them, such as the infanticide filmed on the BBC's Springwatch this year. A scientific if gruesome first. That lekking however would be something to see and while we had planned to try and see this this year other needs got in the way around the time of the nightjars arrival in mid May. I fear it is too late now in the season.

Which brings me to 2023. I wrote of our first visit over the May Spring Bank Holiday on this site a month or so back. Our second visit in early June wasn't brilliant for nightjar activity. There was the usual churring and wing clapping but within five minutes all activity moved onto the valley and out of sight. However that did bring one treat in finding a glow-worm. I'd not seen one shining for years, not since Mrs Wessex Reiver moved from Wiltshire where they were common near her home shining brightly between the railway ballast at Little Bedwyn. Interestingly there, and presumably elsewhere, they switched their lights off as a train approached and only relit them once it had long passed.

The latest visit was after a hot and bothersome humid day last weekend. Even driving to the site at 9pm the car thermometer showed 22oC. Our arrival coincided with the sunset at 9.30pm, but it was still very light. Moments later we were at our usual vantage spot.  Only five minutes or so later the first churring, that then stopped. A few minutes later more churring this time accompanied by the whoop-whee-whoop call.. And then over our heads like a large flapping bat the male flew low over to some often used trees behind us. Churring began. For the following half an hour we were entertained by two nightjar churring and changing position in a wide figure of eight pattern. I'm not sure whether it was the warm weather or the stillness of the night but these birds were very active and kept us on our toes. Brief glimpses of them flying between churring posts were regular. One even perched on a dead tree in a perfect nightjar silhouette.  We walked a little nearer but as it flew off it was joined by another nightjar (by now it was too dark to see more than the shapes) and the pair flitted and flapped up and down the ride only a few feet above our heads. Not since that first sighting on the Mendips twenty five years ago have I experienced such a close fly by of a nightjar, and never for so long. In all this activity (I think there could have been three individuals here) lasted for over 45 minutes before they all headed towards the valley. Even as we walked to our valley view-point another nightjar flew over us. Simply magical and we were surprised on checking our phones that it was now well past eleven o'clock.

We didn't want to leave while the churring in the valley was continuing and churring behind our viewpoint was also continuing. Eventually though fatigue and a 30 mile drive to come made us think of heading home.

It was once back home that I looked at a couple of films I'd taken on my mobile phone, mostly taken to record the sound. One however showed a very brief fly past of a nightjar that I'd not noticed at the time, very much blink and you'll miss it. But another film had a longer flight I'd seen but thought I'd failed to capture. The two images above are stills taken from the film. It is hard to see in the first one so in the second one I've circled the nightjar (that feint black speck) and its direction of flight. This second clip is lovely as I've got the churring, the calling, the wing flap and then the flight, ending in the bird perching out of sight and calling 'choo-weep'.

Nothing matches being there in the darkness listening to this astonishing bird going about its business, but the films help me remember the behavioural sequence which is repeated time and time again. We should be able to return a couple more times before they head back to Africa and I can't wait. I never ever tire of standing in a plantation after dark and experiencing this phenomenal bird. I just need a camera that can match that experience too.

Large Blue Is On The Wing

 Despite the forecast suggesting an increasing risk of thunderstorms and thick heavy cloud I decided on the spur of the moment to head down to a butterfly reintroduction site in south Somerset. My quest today was to see if the large blue [Phengaris arion] butterfly was on the wing - I was not disappointed.

I last visited this site two years ago when after a sizzling few hours of frustratingly seeing but being unable to photograph large blues, I realised later when at home that I had actually managed to take a photograph of a motley specimen after all.   Two years ago it was quite late in their flight season, today however I hoped to be there at the beginning of the season. Looking on-line I had only seen a couple of sightings posted. 

As luck would have it when I arrived it was spotting with rain and quite cool, certainly different to the last few weeks of hot dry sunshine. But that lack of rain shows on the ground as everything here was baked hard, cracks you can get fingers down in the thin soil, and more worrying many of the ants' nests that are crucial to the survival of the large blue looked like they'd been broken open and robbed by presumably badger, green woodpecker, or maybe even foxes. There were intact ants' mounds around but a quick scan revealed at least half of the mounds were broken apart or damaged. One even had a fresh badger tunnel dug into it.

It was noticeable on first walking onto the reserve that it looked like it had gone back a little since my last visit, with quite a noticeable increase in scrub. The once prominent signs directing people to the site have gone too, did they attract too many visitors? When the large blue were first introduced here the site was kept secret. The then recently installed horse gallops half way up the hill have also been abandoned by the looks of it which is a good thing I'd suggest, as what was mown turf and artificial gallop material on my last visit is now quite overgrown. Not good for the large blue, but reverting to wild for more generalist species, like this small heath, which intrigued me. It was stationed on some sheep's fleece for ages. I'm assuming the fleece lanolin is providing minerals of some form, but I can't recall seeing butterflies on fleece before - I've probably not looked to be honest.

The main path pushing further into the ancient downland area is now overgrown meaning I had to divert downhill a little where I spied a very familiar object. Either this is for a training day or a transect is about to happen.

Having pushed through the scrub, snagging myself a few times on the dog roses now growing everywhere, my first large butterfly of the day was one or two  meadow brown, which proved frustratingly hard to get a decent image of.

It was while trying to snap a better image of the meadow brown that a blue butterfly flew past at speed at knee height, a common blue by the lighter colour of it, large blue do look sooty blue on the wing. It was gone before I really registered it, with just my mental filing system dismissing large blue. Spots of rain were still falling and while those species I was now seeing were proving fascinating I did wonder if I'd come too early, on a day with the wrong weather, to see my target species. 

Planning to walk on a little along this forty degree slope, I looked down to check my footing and there, right next to my shoe, a large blue.

I only had time for a very quick record photograph before this beauty rose and flew off to join what I think were three maybe four large blue quartering the exact same place I 'd seen them two years ago. I now had got my eye in. The cooler conditions were making them less mobile than I feared they may be which allowed for a number of close encounters, (though not too close for this protected species). 

        

To be honest it was near impossible to know how many were in front of me. Definitely four, but I'd struggle to say more in this first area as they were being both very mobile and quite sedentary once they settled. Those resting on thyme with wings open were really easy to spot, that dark Wedgewood blue really does punch out from the short downland vegetation.

Once I'd fired off a dozen or so images I relaxed and just watched them going about their business without me looking through the viewfinder. This is the closest I've been to newly emerged large blue and I can appreciate, though don't condone, why Victorian naturalists craved this species for their collections. Newly emerged as these were they are absolutely stunning, a thing of beauty.

This female is egg laying on thyme

Within half an hour I'd seen more large blue butterflies than in my entire lifetime. As I sat for a while just taking this all in I began to wonder how these now-naturalised 20-30th generation differ from Swedish stock they originated from. Maybe they don't. 

However insect evolution can be rapid due to quick birth-develop-adult-breed-die generations. Yes these blues in Somerset are not from a British stock, but they are the same species as the ones brought over from Scandinavia, yet have these now English emerging adults begun to adapt at all, adapting to survive on a dry south facing slope in Somerset? Is the interaction with the ants identical? It's a thought.

I'd read this week that although large blue colonies are faring well across the UK, this site having previously been the best place in Britain in terms of large blue abundance, has suffered a little. Although there is still a healthy population here, a succession of less favourable winters, wet and cold springs and prolonged periods of drought have reduced numbers significantly. Though, as someone who studied statistical analysis in conservation for my degree all those years ago I ask myself is any of this change statistically significant? 

Is it a worry given what I saw today of the desiccated and smashed ant-hills and the concrete hard baked soil? The number of butterflies on the wing today was good, I found more on my way back in another area, counting five at least, three spiralling on the wing. But without some much needed rain, will the ants, the host flowers and the area itself be productive enough to sustain this fragile butterfly at the north-western edge of it's range? I'll leave that question hanging there while I revisit this image of a remarkable and stunning species brought back from extinction.

The Fox, The Cat, and The Crow

The image accompanying this short post has absolutely nothing to do with what follows, however I observed this earlier in the year at Wells Cathedral and it made me smile.

More recently for the last few nights the carrion crows in the area have been kicking up one heck of a din around and after midnight. Nights of course are short in June but this raucous harsh cawwing has pierced the silence of the darkness and has continued regularly for the last week or so. I first heard this commotion about 11.30pm one night as I stood in the garden before bed. Alerted to the noise I could see the carrion crows flying about silhouetted against the still feint blue sky to the west, but that was all. No other sound aside from their caw-caw-caw. On another occasion there was an almighty din coming from the field at the rear of the house at around 1 am. In that instance two maybe three crows were being very vocal and moving about quickly. I suspected there was a nocturnal predator about but couldn't see anything or be certain. 

But now I think I have solved the mystery - a fox. 

We have a lot of foxes around there, making best use of the mixed habitat of the very rural landscape all the way to the sea and the very built up suburbia with scavenging opportunities. Each of these two habitats is separated by the lane which runs behind our house to the village itself. On Friday night, or should I say at 2am on Saturday, our cat who is a fully trained mafia boss woke me up for a feed.  Duly fed he popped outside to sit on the drive, something he regularly does after a handsome meal. Moments later there was an explosion of caw-caw-caw from the trees behind me. The calling drew closer accompanied by wingbeats and then across the street a fox casually lolloped along the front gardens of the houses opposite, being followed, well below roof height, by a pair of crows becoming more agitated by the minute. Eventually the fox leapt up over a fence and went behind another house, closely followed by the noisy sentinels. After what seemed an age but was more likely only a minute the noise of the crows faded then died away, silence resumed. 

Gingernut our cat sat on the drive watching this unfold with resigned bemusement. He is a marvellous cat as he has absolutely no interest in birds and simply observes them even if he and they are on the lawn together. The resident hedgehog likewise gets a wide birth. I put it down to intelligence on his part after I educated him to not kill wildlife. Mrs Wessex-Reiver says he's conserving his energy as it is beneath him to react as it would be far too much effort to chase after a prey item. She may be right.

The question then on my lips is are the crows and fox interacting because of disturbance? Or, more likely, are young fledgling crows about that I can't see and the adults are simply being good parents? From what I saw of the fox it was patrolling the gardens not trying to get at something intently like a stricken bird on the ground. I can't be 100% certain every carrion crow cawing at night has been due to the fox as in the behaviour I witnessed, but it makes reasonable sense as foxes are a nightly occurrence, though of course rats or other cats may be to the creator of this darkest hour pandemonium on other occasions.

It is not the first time Gingernut our cat and the local foxes have been together. I suspect there is some interaction of sorts going on as he leads a very much nocturnal life. A month or so back I was woken by the foxes trashing a neighbours recycling boxes. Leaning out the bedroom window there were two foxes who seeing me fled down the street. Moments later Gingernut appeared from the exact same area as the recycling boxes and foxes and nonchalantly trotted over the road and into the house with an air of "nothing to see here". Was he across there with the foxes all three trashing the recycling boxes, or was he simply innocently passing? I have my suspicions he was with them and interacting to a greater or lesser degree with them as I've seen him twice now watching a fox intently on our drive, well before I have. 

Non peer-reviewed research suggests foxes and cats do interact and by and large there is no combative competition. Foxes being bigger could of course kill a cat, but cats are mean street fighters and observational research suggests foxes avoid cats due to the latter's claws and lightning fast reflexes. Even Gingernut who we think is about twelve or 13 years old can show remarkable ferocity when the neighbourhood cats enter the garden, though with the street domiciled fox, he just watches the fox trot by, which is why I have my suspicions he is a feline co-ordinator of this mayhem, like a ginger Godfather.

Now - I just need a good, unbroken, night of sleep......

Further reading  : 

Are foxes a threat to cats (2014)

http://www.catbehaviourist.com/blog/study-certified-cat-behaviourist-anita-kelsey/