Summer on the wing

At the risk of being corny, I’m amazed at how time flies. Two weekends ago (it seems a lot longer somehow) I spent a perfect summer afternoon investigating a small bramble hedge in the middle of Hampshire. Who knows how long I spent there; I was utterly absorbed, but I do know that I could barely see past the butterflies. There were clouds of them! I was astonished at how intently they foraged, as many fiercely territorial species sat calmly together and drank deeply from the bramble flowers. Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it was the end of the breeding season; maybe it was just that they were getting drunk on good nectar, but I’ve never had so many butterflies sit so patiently for me.

First up was Polygonia c-album, or the Comma, a lovely amber coloured creature with attractively raggedy wings. Wondering how it got that name? Look at the bright marking on the underwing in the picture below – you should be able to tell!

At first I thought this Argynnis paphia, or Silver Washed Fritillary was a Comma too, but its larger size and calligraphic markings gave it away. Although this particular individual is very much past its best you can still see what an impressive and beautiful creature it is.

Let’s take a closer look at its wonderful green and orange furred body and spotted eyes

A little further along I found a Pyronia tithonus, or Gatekeeper – these sprightly butterflies were very active and though I saw many in the hedgerow this was the only one that would sit for me. I think it’s a female.

Time passed, and I realised that most butterflies had drunk their fill and moved on. I stalked the perimeter of the field and found nothing else that would sit still for me. Time to try the garden (we were staying at R’s parents house) which has many plants beloved of butterflies. Sure enough, there was an Aglais urticae, or Small Tortoiseshell on the lavender.

And the Gonepteryx rhamni, or Brimstone butterfly looked well on this striking blue flowered shrub. They particularly liked this plant, which seemed quite poetic given how the fizzy yellow of the butterfly looked against the improbably blue flower.

I had been anxiously hoping to find some Inachis io, or Peacock butterflies, having seen a colony of their caterpillars on nettles much earlier in the summer. They couldn’t all have been killed, surely? It seemed wrong that I hadn’t found an adult yet. Then, on a trespassing bramble I saw this…

What a showstopper! It was worth a bit of mild anxiety just to see this glorious insect – a male, fresh and glossy and presumably just emerged from its pupa.  I intend to write a little more about peacock butterflies, but I’ll leave that till another time.

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Adventures in the undergrowth

R’s parents live in an idyllic part of rural Hampshire, and the fields that surround their home reveal views that shift and change with each passing season. It’s heavily agricultural, but there is plenty to see all the same. As we stood taking in this wonderful late summer view of a ripening oilseed crop it was gratifying to see how many ox eye daisies and field poppies had infiltrated the field. The panorama was wonderful, but to me the landscape got more and more interesting the closer to our own noses we listened and looked. After we had stood in silence for a while, an unmistakable and bloodcurdling racket commenced only a few yards away. The creatures making the din were completely hidden in the dense oilseed stems and they knew it – fox cubs shrieked and chittered uninhibitedly as they chased and play-fought in the dense foliage. It was tantalising to know they were so close and yet we stood no chance at all of actually seeing them.

Hidden in the fence posts and rotton tree boles that ringed our side of the field we could hear the thin “seep-seep” of baby birds on the nest. Furtive rustlings became detectable as we allowed ourselves to quieten and absorb the goings on of our immediate surroundings. A nettle patch revealed this nest of elegant, spiky black caterpillars. After a frantic larval stage of gorging on nettles they will become peacock butterflies. These lovely insects happily frequent gardens and are commonly found on nectar rich garden flowers such as buddlea. You will only get them in numbers if there is a thriving, undesturbed nettle patch nearby, so butterfly lovers – spare a sunny nettle patch in a “wild” part of your garden and you will be richly rewarded for giving our native creatures a home.

Upon close examination it became clear that their habit of sticking together for protection might not always work. Wizened, discarded shells that were most certainly not the result of a moult were clearly visible among the grazing catties. An even closer look revealed one possible culprit…

A spider, carrying her perfectly round silk basket of eggs. The exhausting task of hauling this extra load around might result in her taking up home near a readily available supply of caterpillar snacks – she is eating for two thousand, after all. A little closer to the human scale of things, these common hogweed flowers are a sure sign of high summer. They take their name from their distinctly piggy aroma which does not seem to put off the hover flies that adore them so.

Get a little closer to these common hedgerow plants and they become, with a little imagination, an exotic location in themselves. Each umbel bears many tiny, tightly packed dull white flowers which overlap one another, getting smaller and smaller as you go toward the centre of the umbel. Get up very close and you will see hoverflies landing with the precision of a jump jet pilot, and suddenly you are looking at another planet, a science fiction wonder where metallic striped space ships are docking on a floating organic latticework, loading their mysterious cargos and vanishing, Zip! into the unknown.

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