Month: July 2024

The prolonged dull weather has done little for our mood or our butterfly populations. Our mid-summer butterflies are conspicuously inconspicuous. We should be dazzled by Peacocks, Commas, Silver-washed Fritillaries and Brimstones. Instead, we are being served the occasional Green-veined White, and plenty, it must be said, of Meadow Browns. Ringlets are plentiful in their favoured damp grassy haunts where you become the diet of horseflies and midges. The places most of us, if we are sensible, stay away from, except for people like me.

Our more glamorous species cannot stay out of sight indefinitely. The immature stages last longer in cool weather than in warm conditions and longer development times mean emergence will occur later than in most seasons in recent years. For example, our warm June in 2023 saw the first report of the Silver-washed Fritillary on 21 June when it was seen at Lullymore, Kildare, by Pat Wyse.  June 2024 was cold. We did not register the first report of this butterfly until Michael Gray saw five recently hatched examples at The Raven on 16 July. The woodland at The Raven in south-east Wexford is in one of our warmer, drier places where emergence is typically earlier.

Significantly, the first report of a Silver-washed Fritillary in Lullymore in 2024 was on 23 July. It began to fly in Lullymore 32 days later than in 2023. When they finally hatch, what challenges do they face in a damp, dull summer and how does the butterfly face them?

The Silver-washed Fritillary is, in my opinion, the perfect butterfly. It shows the classic butterfly outline and beautiful patterning. The male’s deep orange uppersides are marked with black spots, diamonds, bars and chevrons. The female is paler overall, and she lacks bar markings. Both sexes have moss-coloured hindwings with silver streaks and a marginal silver band. The forewing underside apex echoes the hindwing’s mossy hue while the rest of the underside is more muted orange than the upperside.

The male is especially glorious in bright sunshine when the orange ground colour gleams irresistibly in the clear light. The glow across the wings of a pristine male is breathtaking, a simple gleam of perfection, as sublime as it is ephemeral.

In cool, overcast but bright weather, the butterfly can be active. An air temperature of 16 Celsius in calm weather will allow it to fly but it will need to vibrate its flight muscles when feeding on bramble or thistle to retain the ability to take to the air. Males will seek females along the edges of woodland and after its beautiful courtship, the couple settle in a tree. Trees are important to the species. Butterflies will shelter in trees when the skies threaten rain and at night.  On dull, windy days that is where they stay, wings closed tightly while clinging to the underside of a leaf, often quite high in the canopy.

The butterfly can live for around a month, long enough to wait for a warm day. It can mate and lay eggs in narrow time windows. The wet summer of 2009 left us wondering how many Silver-washed Fritillaries we’d see in the summer of 2010. We saw many that summer. The butterfly had demonstrated its ability to make maximum use of good weather windows.

The summer of 2007 was even worse. There was constant rain for days, with heavy flooding in many places including damp woods where the Silver-washed Fritillary breeds. Flooding certainly kills caterpillars. Marsh Fritillary larvae near bank-bursting water bodies drowned in July 2007. However, the caterpillar of the Silver-washed Fritillary is mostly immune from summer, autumn, winter and early spring flooding. Water inundation is avoided by laying eggs on trees, usually on the trunk, often four or more metres from the ground. The female avoids the danger of summer heat by laying on the north-facing side of the trunk. After two to three weeks, the egg hatches and the tiny caterpillar hibernates in a crevice in the bark, staying put until spring when it descends to the woodland floor to feed on violets.

There are few butterflies more graceful than the Silver-washed Fritillary. In hot sunshine, young males become extremely restless, darting to inspect flowering brambles for a resting female, or flying with rapidly beating wings along the edge of a wood or a track through the wood, pausing very briefly for bramble nectar. It also likes Common Knapweed, Creeping Thistle and occasionally Wild Carrot, Angelica, Common Cat’s-ear and Rough Hawkbit. One moment it scours the canopy of a mature oak, before swooping down to settle tremulously on a pink bramble blossom then dashing off to pursue another male. The butterfly will sometimes glide when it wants to inspect its surroundings.

At times the butterfly basks quietly, its bright orange wings spread on a frond of fresh green bracken. A quiet approach will give you the chance of a good view and a photograph, but this is a vigilant creature who often will not perch for long enough.

As glorious as the uppersides are, it was named for the silver flashes on the hindwing, by Moses Harris (1730-1787). It has always been richly appreciated by butterfly lovers and artists, and for good reason. In 1888 the renowned English author and artist Frederick William Frohawk was thrilled to observe that  “the Silver-washed Fritillary were in hoards in every ride in the New Forest.” Its beauty, elegance and wonderful courtship flight continue to work their charm today.  Dr Jeremy Thomas waxes lyrical in his book on Britain’s butterflies: “Only one of the 50 fritillaries of Europe exceeds this butterfly in size, and none is more beautiful or more magnificent.” The butterfly’s species name, Paphia, is associated with the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of love, desire, sexual pleasure, fertility, beauty, and grace.

These nouns are imaginatively applicable to this gorgeous creature of mid-summer woodland. There are woods where flowers disappear before the butterfly’s flight season has ended and this might explain why individuals have been found away from breeding habitats, such as in gardens and parks. Despite its aerial powers it rarely leaves its breeding wood, and sometimes remains in a small part of the wood when most of it is unsuitable for breeding.

You will only find it in woods containing open areas where light reaches the herb layer where violets occur in some abundance. It inhabits oak woods, hazel woods, ash and ivy woods and woods on peat containing willow and birch. It is happy in woods containing Scots Pine and non-native pines, as long as these are light-filled and contain enough nectar sources, usually bramble.

Now is the time to look for this lovely, powerful butterfly. It has survived in Ireland despite what we did to our woods over the past 500 years. Let us be grateful that we can still enjoy it.

All photographs copyright J. Harding

Mid-summer has arrived but judging the summer season by butterfly abundance would be a mistake this year. Never have I experienced a summer butterfly famine like the one in July 2024.

Masses of flowering bramble and Creeping Thistle near my home in rural Meath typically hold fluttering confusions of butterflies in July but not this year. It is 19 July as I write, and I have seen three Commas, about six Small Tortoiseshells, and a similar number of Speckled Woods and Common Blues, no Red Admiral, no Painted Lady, no Peacock, one Brimstone since 1 July.

Butterfly Conservation UK, in the throes of its Big Butterfly Count, has found the Meadow Brown is showing the highest abundance at the end of week one. Butterfly Conservation UK recently stated: “So far this year we have seen a decrease in the number of butterflies seen across the UK. This is likely the result of a combination of a wet and windy spring and recent low temperatures.”

The weather causes they state applies in Ireland, and our experience of low population matches that in Britain.

The bleak picture has one exception, in Lullybeg Reserve at least. Hundreds of Ringlet butterflies are bobbing low over tussocks of moor-grass on Butterfly Conservation Ireland’s reserve.  Individuals pause to bask and feed on Wild Valerian and Marsh Thistle, the latter plant a favourite for several mid-summer nectar and pollen feeders.

Last Tuesday I counted 259 Ringlets on just part of the reserve. It is a relief that at least one species likes cool, wet conditions! Indeed, Ringlets will even fly in dull weather and even in drizzle if it is muggy and warm. Although the butterfly is not brightly coloured, it is reassuring to see it in abundance, a sign that the grassland is in a healthy state for it. You can see a Ringlet at:

Despite the low abundance and reduced number of species flying in many areas this July, a few butterflies showed themselves at Lullybeg, and the flowers look wonderful.

We hope you like the photos that follow.

Finally, to close on a happy note, our reserve’s Marsh Fritillary population enjoyed another bumper year. In the Lullybeg area, the Marsh Fritillary’s recorded flight period was from 19 May to 3 July. Some were observed mating and egg-laying. A total of 204 Marsh Fritillaries were counted at Lullybeg in this period, a great number given the limited opportunities afforded by the weather to get out to monitor them.

All photographs copyright J.Harding.

 

Suffering from butterfly deprivation…empty grasslands… I’ve passed several (Buddleia) on my dog walks, but haven’t seen a single butterfly on any of them…A walk from Potter Heigham to Hickling Broad yesterday, limited butterfly activity…Ringlet seen on a transect walk at Foxley yesterday, very little else recorded apart from a few Speckled Woods…Weather has been unkind to us at our last 2 events the Wheatfen Swallowtail Day and Wild About Mannington. A Swallowtail put in a brief appearance at Wheatfen…

Here are a few comments harvested from social media reporting on butterfly populations in England during June 2024.

My experience in Ireland has been empty nettle beds, wingless skies, thin populations of some of our commonest butterflies and peering at the best habitats in Ireland to pick out a flicker of butterfly colour.

What’s wrong?

Let’s consider the weather. May 2024 was described as the warmest May on record by the Irish Meteorological Service. This surprised me. I wonder if night-time temperatures played a role in this finding. June, however, was described as cool, dry with the temperature below average nearly everywhere. All available sunshine totals were below their long-term average.

It remains cool in early July, with no upturn in temperatures predicted as I write on 5 July. Today we are looking at temperatures between 14 and 17 Celsius.

Is it just a case of below-par weather?

That’s unlikely.

It is certainly correct that our butterflies are strongly influenced by weather conditions with emergence greatly delayed by prolonged cool conditions. The sunny May and June saw the Silver-washed Fritillary begin to emerge on 21 June. We have not recorded it yet (as of 5 July). No new Brimstone has yet been recorded.

However, there appears to be an issue with our Vanessids: Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Peacock, and Red Admiral. There are very few records of these butterflies this summer, in any life form. Between 16 May and 5 July, we have had four sightings of the Small Tortoiseshell, all singletons. Between 9 May and 5 July, two Commas were seen by Michael Gray on 3 July. We have not had any record of the Peacock since 31 May. Up to 5 July, only 20 Red Admirals have been reported to Butterfly Conservation Ireland’s recording scheme. These species breed on nettles and some parasitoids affect all four species. Has there been a peak in a parasitoid that has reduced populations?  Has there been more than one factor impacting the butterflies?  The wasp Phobocampe confusa for example, parasitises Small Tortoiseshell, Peacock and Red Admiral and probably the Comma.

The cool conditions cannot delay the emergence of these species indefinitely. When they emerge, we might understand the nature of any impacts on their populations. All these species enjoyed abundance in 2023, especially the Small Tortoiseshell and Comma. Perhaps we are seeing a crash in 2024.

When cool conditions occur during a species flight period, such as during the Marsh Fritillary’s flight period in May and June this year, its flight period can extend later into June and into July, as it has in Lullybeg this year. In 2024 the Marsh Fritillary recorded flight period in Lullybeg has extended from 19 May to 3 July. In 2023, when we had a sunny May and June, the butterfly’s flight period was from 16 May to 22 June. In cool weather, the butterfly rests deep in vegetation waiting for suitable weather. Despite being typically short-lived, the adult Marsh Fritillary can sit out cool weather for two weeks, possibly longer, if needed.

Most of our butterflies are adapted to cool weather, but the adults thrive in warmer weather allowing them to feed, disperse, find mates and lay their eggs. Prolonged bad weather damages populations which rebound quickly in years with better weather.

Provided we are looking after their homes.

 

Our Moth Morning hosted by Philip Strickland was a great success. We had over 100 species and still counting. The rain did not deter the moths, because the temperature was high enough to make them active.

There were several traps set in different parts of Philip’s grounds. Philip is wilding his four-acre site near Maynooth with very encouraging results. The grounds contain a native hedge over 100 metres long, with hawthorn, Common Hazel, Common Holly, Spindle, and Common Blackthorn, among other native plants. His grassland habitat contains native grasses, especially Sweet Vernal grass, and flora such as Common Sorrel, Cuckooflower, Common Knapweed, and buttercup species. This unspoilt grassland teems with Orange-tip and Green-veined White in spring followed by Meadow Brown and Ringlet while shadier spots are the Speckled Wood zones. Small Tortoiseshell and Red Admiral use his nettles and a closer look might reveal Comma too. Philip’s incipient native woodland which contains Pedunculate Oak of Irish provenance will become an enormous asset to biodiversity as it matures.

The grounds are managed in sympathy with nature. No chemicals are applied, and native plants are central to everything Philip is doing. The basic infrastructure of indigenous plants already in situ is being built upon by adding more and gradually removing non-native trees put there by the previous owners.

The results revealed by the moth count on Saturday 29 June underscore the importance of the native planting not only in the 109-plus species found but in the abundance of individuals and the range of habitats and breeding requirements represented. Tree-breeding species, grassland and scrubland breeders were present.

As I write, the micro-moths are still being identified which will push the total up. The colours, shapes and textures offered all of us great pleasure. Green, yellow, red, black, brown, white and various shades and combinations of these hues tantalised and delighted. It is reassuring in an epoch of mass extinction to witness high abundance. Hopeful too, for optimism is needed. Everything cannot be bleak. The simple measures Philip adopted afford vital resources to hard-pressed animals in an intensively farmed region but also pleasure and inspiration.

We viewed the moths under cover from the rain which made for comfort and greater attention. The bigger beasts on view included the Elephant Hawkmoth, Swallow-tailed Moth, Light Emerald, the Green, Light and Dark Arches and the Large Yellow Underwing. The medium-sized moths were in great abundance: Clouded Brindle, some quite fresh, Common Emerald, Common White Wave, the descriptively named Spectacle and Dark Spectacle, the sharply-dressed Cinnabar, elegantly gowned White Ermine and its less showy cousin, the Buff Ermine were all in attendance. The Straw Dot, a grassland breeder which hates nitrogen fertiliser, showed in high numbers. What a treat.

The excitement did not end there. Philip laid on a wonderful refreshment for us in his home. Conversation, frequently contentious and animated, flowed. Mothing is about people too!

On behalf of Butterfly Conservation Ireland, thank you Philip for allowing us to hold our event at your home. Thanks to everyone who made the morning so enjoyable. The experience was a real pleasure. Our only regret is that it was not much better supported.

All photos J. Harding except where stated otherwise.