By The Curious Scribbler,

There are so many gloomy stories about butterflies these days that I am moved to report some good news from my garden.

Sitting for half an hour on the lawn yesterday I was able to count eight species disporting themselves in the garden.  There were numerous immaculate newly emerged Red Admirals flitting around the apple trees.  Each time they encountered one another they spiralled upwards in a tight dance of two or even three butterflies, streaking across the sky above me like swallows before returning to the buddleia or the trees.  Sometimes one mis-identified another and swerved off in pursuit with a Comma.

Patrolling the circumference of my large yellow-berried holly was a Holly Blue, searching no doubt to attract a mate and lay eggs upon its shiny green foliage.

The Holly Blue (male/upperwing) Photo: Iain Leach

Several Large White butterflies ( or they may have been Small White)  roamed more freely from plant to plant, and four different species of brown butterflies put in an appearance.  A Ringlet, wings folded upright to display the eye spots, rested on a shrub and then fluttered among seeding grasses.  A Speckled Wood emerged from the deeper shade to bask on the holly, two Hedge Browns  (Gatekeepers) twirled together just above ground and a rather worn Meadow Brown  flitted in the hay meadow nearby.

I still identify butterflies from a little yellow book I was given for my tenth birthday – A Butterfly Book for the Pocket by Edmund Sandars.  Commenced in the late 19th century and first published in 1939 it was then a pioneering format with a life-size watercolour of each butterfly in both open-wing and closed wing positions, and a stippled map of its distribution in the British Isles on the facing page, along with a summary followed by more detailed two-page description.   Mine is the third impression, (1955) and contains thanks from the publisher for expert advice from Mr E.B. Ford who had added a further species ( but no picture) to the Appendix group of foreign butterflies which were occasionally seen in Britain.  In addition to the rare migrant European Pale Clouded Yellow Colias hyale, recognized by Sandars, Mr Ford  claimed an Scarce Clouded Yellow, Colias australis, which is normally found no nearer than Hawaii.

Professor E.B. Ford was still lecturing in Entomology at Oxford University when I studied there in 1969; he was so noted a misogynist that when only women attended his nine o’clock lectures he would decline to speak!  He was probably also wrong about the Scarce Clouded White, which no longer appears in the lists published on the Butterfly Conservation and UK Butterfly websites, but can be purchased from World Wide Butterflies.

These days we observe butterflies with binoculars rather than nets, so I have pinched the photo of the Holly Blue from the excellent Butterfly Conservation website.