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.

Quantock Easter 1 of 3 : These Boots Aren't Made For Walking

Over the weekend, three contrasting walks were taken by myself and Mrs Wessex-Reiver. The first of these, which I'll write up as a Trichotomous Saga, began on Easter Saturday before dawn.....

An insipid light irradiated the curtains from outside, curtains still closed tight against the now rapidly receding nightfall. I lay in bed identifying the birdsong, blackbird, robin, dunnock and jackdaw dominated, some herring gull way off. All the while I struggled to rouse myself for a planned early start, though to be honest by the time we were on the M5 the sun was well over the horizon and its solar light dazzling the now awake landscape. 

All my life if I plan an earlier than normal morning start I can never sleep properly the night before. Easter Saturday was such a day where after waking at 2am, I lay in the darkness until just after six, before a mad scramble out of the door before 8am. There was a long walk ahead of us, I needed breakfast. After 20 minutes on the road I swung the car beside a Greggs on an industrial estate in Bridgwater, leaving minutes later bearing one bacon butty (three slices and tomato sauce), a large sausage roll and a hot chocolate for my companion for the day, Mrs Wessex Reiver. A bargain indeed at £3.80. Fifteen minutes later I switched off the engine at Holford Green Car Park to begin our walk after that very welcome breakfast, a breakfast accompanied by the harsh loud caws of the rooks in the rookery above our heads. I like it here. I'll take the sausage roll with me for my elevenses.

Spring is really gathering pace in Somerset as field and dale turns green by the hour, yet here at Holford nestling in the Quantock Hills winter still had a firm grip on the landscape. The lack of leaves in April is an illusion of course. The territorial  birdsong as we began our walk was phenomenal, song thrush, green woodpecker, robin, dunnock, great, blue and long tailed tit, blackbird and above most of this and ostensibly everywhere, nuthatch. We come here a lot.

Holford is a small village off the A39 that has so much to offer the walker and naturalist. The poets Wordsworth and Coleridge knew this landscape intimately as Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived for nearly a year at Alfroxton House less than a mile away.  The duo would ramble over this landscape at all hours of the day and night, composing poetry, conversing with each other though above all integrating themselves in and as part of nature.  I'm currently reading a fascinating 2020 biography; Radical Wordsworth by Jonathan Bate, to better understand the man and how this west Somerset landscape inspired his writing. As a prodigious walker, Wordsworth in his lifetime is estimated to have travelled 175,000 miles on foot. We'll not do quite that distance today, just five miles, though a walk of lovely contrasts.

We began at the lower end of Hodder's Combe where the deep valley sides cut by the stream over millennia  hold extensive areas of sessile oak. At this low elevation the birdsong is very much of a woodland mix. In a few weeks time the summer migrants will add to the native chorus, willow warbler, wood warbler, cuckoo, spotted flycatcher or if we're lucky a rare native here, a lesser spotted woodpecker. My favourite of these woods is the the pied flycatcher which I've seen and recorded its call here a number of times. Today though it was the the chiff - chaff call of the onomatopoetic chiffchaff adding a little finesse to our steady climb up the combe.

We'd been travelling for about fifteen minutes when Mrs W-R, pointed to a space ahead of her and called out yellow wagtail - initially it was by the side of the stream, before flying up into the tree. Honestly it is in that tree above, as you can see from this terrible photograph below, I only had my mobile. Oh well we saw it, just the one bird in fabulous condition and I would not be surprised if this bird had literally just arrived in the last 24 hours as it wasn't fidgety as wagtails usually are, and sat obligingly on the branch for a considerable time preening. I've seen them here most years, with a handful taking up territories in the fields along the streamside by the ford we now crossed. [ed. probably grey wagtail in this shot - thanks Stewart]

We climbed higher. Subtly the tree cover begins to open out. The valley widens and sunlight floods the ground. Once this was an industrial area with tanneries and weaving mills utilising the bark and water from the stream. At the time of Wordsworth this was a busy semi-rural-industrial landscape full of activity. Today the air is clear and lichen covers virtually every tree trunk

Occasionally one can see a relic of the past in a tree, such as this 'wire cut' which denotes a long lost fence the oak tree will have grown into and around producing this tell tale growth.. 

We'd been walking about forty five minutes now and the heat was beginning to build bringing out the first butterflies. I've not seen many butterflies this season, yet today we saw a number of peacock and speckled wood in the higher parts of the woodland here. Up on the ridge it is possibly too windy for them but down here is a microclimate they seem to enjoy, evident as I watched a pair of speckled wood twist and turn like a vortex on the wing.

While the Lepidoptera may be few, everywhere there is the sound of water from miniature waterfalls and cascades. At this point we were nearly through the trees and about to climb up onto the open ridge via a path through an area known as Lady's Edge.

One of the many natural aspects these woods are famous for are the polypodium ferns which grow here on the trunks of the sessile oak. While not unusual to do this, these ferns tend to exhibit this epiphytic behaviour in western woods where there is a constant and high level of humidity.  Looking around today I noticed a lot of these ferns have vanished leaving just a hair like wiry stalk sticking out of the moss. Last year was a severe drought season, we're still technically in drought after all these wet winter months. I'm assuming then despite being a fern that can tolerate a modicum of dry weather, the many months of dry weather last year hasn't been beneficial. Anecdotally there is less fern cover on trees here than when I first visited twenty odd years ago, which is worrying. Climate change is playing funny games in ways we'd not expect.  

This woodland is also managed to leave standing dead timber unfelled, allowing the passing observer sights like these turkey tail polypores [Trametes versicolor] to enrich a walk.

By now we were up onto the open moorland and scrub, where the birdsong changed. A few robin and wren remained vocal but with the silencing of the woodland species the predominant bird now was the stonechat. I counted around six pairs along this path - males resplendent in their black and red-sand plumage with a vicars dog collar, the mottled grey-brown females always close by. I do like stonechats, they just add vibrancy to a landscape, and are easy to see too.

As were the lambs and ewes. We'd almost made it to the top, and a wooden marker known as Bicknoller Post. It was absolutely stunning up here, the sun was now strong and the heat was building in the earth beneath our feet. Time for a well earned rest and to take in the view.

From this point and those nearby we can see all the way to Exmoor, with Minehead in the middle ground, then around to Wales and the North Somerset coast where Brean Down thrusts itself reptile like into the Bristol Channel. No wonder then Coleridge rehearsed and wrote his famous poem the Rime of the Ancient Mariner while walking this landscape. It is a landscape of contrasts that energises the soul. It did for us, for after a ten minute break we pushed on along one of the tracks. Just because it was there.

It was on this track, high up and importantly dry that I spied this pill millipede [Glomeris marginata]. Such a stunning arthropod though somewhat out of place on this high plateau, and in daylight. The track was being used by many cyclists and horse riders, so doing something I rarely do I intervened and placed it in a cooling bilberry thicket. Of course as I picked this little fellow up it instantly rolled itself into a beautiful ball, its colouring making it like a marble or jewel in my hand. 

We'd been on the go now for around two hours. I had hoped we may have seen a ring ouzel up here, they are reasonably common on migration, but not today, and so despite a wonderful skylark singing over our heads it was time to retrace our steps. 

We stopped at this point below to allow two cyclists to push their bikes up through the mud. I'm not against cyclists in the hills, and we had a nice chat to them about the red deer they'd just seen, but there is an ecological footprint that worries me - especially in a delicate landscape like this which is under increasing pressure to provide physical and mental solace to a growing population. I can't complain at all, after all we were two walkers ourselves adding to the disturbance and the erosion. I do wonder though sometimes what these places would be like if we excluded humans altogether - how quickly would nature take over? How much would return? There is a lot of research taking place into this as the world had a golden opportunity to re-set nature during the lockdown periods of the Covid-19 pandemic. I know personally of areas where pre Covid-19 there were just muddy paths, but a year later these paths had vegetated and become lush grass and often with abundant flowers. In just twelve short months.

We returned to the car just short of three hours walking - not fast, we only covered 5 miles but it was half uphill and half down, we'd had our exercise and near to the car I saw the first bee-fly of the season. A fitting end and a good workout at least. 

But why the title 'These Boots Aren't Made For Walking'? Well, in the rush to leave the house I couldn't find my normal hiking boots, instead I wore my lightweight summer boots which Mrs Wessex-Reiver bought for me last year. Sadly there's something not quite right about these boots - for me. Walking on the flat they're like wearing slippers. Walk uphill they are like wearing comfy shoes. Walk downhill though they pinch and buckle so much that by the time I got to the car I could hardly walk. I can't put my finger on what's wrong but it feels like the support needed to propel a late middle aged Wessex Reiver downhill is just not there. Note to self then, I must remember to take my proper hiking boots with me next time.... which actually turned out to be Easter Monday when we returned once again to Holford....