Wild Things: Hooray for the butterflies

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6 days ago

Wild Things columnist Eric Brown experiences strange thoughts as he goes on a sunlit, rural Kent hill climb seeking to boost sighting numbers for his 2025 butterfly list.
Regular readers of these wildlife jottings might recall how I've bemoaned the paucity of entries on my butterfly list this year. It rarely advances much past 20 in any year but it seemed a tad disappointing to be stuck on just 11 species as I prepared to tear off the June calendar page. Then a decision to go on a butterfly expedition paid handsome dividends.
Wild Things: Can you help with this year's Big Butterfly Count?
Friday, June 27 started warm and got a whole lot hotter. My pal Jim and I headed for the RSPB nature reserve at Northward Hill, in the agricultural belt of Kent near Halstow, after learning that scarce species such as white-letter hairstreak, purple emperor and silver-washed fritillary had been seen there.
As we opened the car door on arrival, a raven could be heard kronking overhead, soon coming into view circling the car park in unhurried, lazy, fashion. A lesser whitethroat could be heard singing. Two ticks for the annual bird list before we'd started searching for butterflies.
As we walked along the path, butterflies were abundant. We saw peacock, red admiral, large, small and green veined whites, lots of ringlets, small heath, gatekeeper, meadow brown, speckled wood and comma. Fantastic but we'd already listed most of those. Then a marbled white showed up, then another and another. They were everywhere. A great year-list tick.
But to locate the trio we really desired we needed to visit the upper slopes of the reserve from a different entrance. Here we neatly vaulted over a style (okay, we more or less fell over it but we were tiring in the heat) and followed a narrow footpath, mostly uphill. We'd paused for a breather when we met another climber descending. He inquired what we were looking for, offered to show us the best spots for the three butterflies we sought, about-turned and retraced his steps at a steady pace.
Jay - I think he said his name was Jay - had already completed this ascent once but speedily stomped ahead like the Grand Old Duke of York marching his men to the top of the hill. I struggled to keep up. Maybe the air was rarefied here but the mind began to play tricks. Was that a nun in those trees singing Climb Every Mountain? Were they mountain goats over there being pursued by a snow leopard? Could I really hear the faint strains of scouting song The Happy Wanderer, a 1954 hit for The Stargazers singing I love to go a-wandering along the mountain track?
Gatekeeper at Crossness 2010 Image: Jim Butler
A shout brought me back to reality. Jay had spotted a fritillary but I'd missed it while daydreaming. Jim missed it too. But we did see holly blue and brimstone. I'm not saying it was high here but were they white clouds way below us? Finally we reached a plateau and the blessed Jay raised an arm saying: "There."
Following his pointing finger we could see what appeared to be a dead leaf on an Elm tree. As our eyes focused it metamorphosed into a motionless dark butterfly. With the benefit of binoculars, silvery-white lines were apparent on the underwings - a white-letter hairstreak.
Jay, still daisy-fresh, invited us to accompany him another 300 yards or so to where he'd seen purple emperor earlier. Jim and I looked at each other and politely declined on grounds of exhaustion.
Wild Things: Birds enjoy an insect boom
We started back down, said goodbye to jaunty Jay and gratefully flopped onto a pathside bench with the temperature topping 27C. Two excellent butterflies showed in nearby grass; brown argus and a skipper. To differentiate between Essex and small skipper, Jim related, you must determine the colour on the underside of the antennae.
Neither of us much fancied scrabbling around on hands and knees in an area smelling of dog poo so we called it a small skipper. But it might have been Essex. Eventually we toppled back over the style in untidy fashion and tumbled thankfully into a car seat. The sunlit car interior must have resembled the post explosion temperature at Chernobyl. No matter. We'd seen 16 different species - five more than my entire number for the year - and the annual list now stood at a far more satisfying 19.
A marbled white Image: Jim Butler
As I drifted off to sleep that night I swear I could hear The Stargazers singing Valdereee-he, Valderaaa-ha, with a knapsack on my back.
*Please spare 15 minutes between July 18 and August 10 to participate in the annual Big Butterfly Count. Details from bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org.