25 Years of Butterfly Recording 1984-2009 by Ashley Whitlock
8 February 2010
This article has not been written by
the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust.
25 Years of Butterfly Recording 1984-2009 by Ashley Whitlock
My interest in Butterflies began in 1984, when I joined Butterfly Conservation, I never thought 25 years later I would have seen so many species of Butterfly and Moths in my home county of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and outlying counties in the south east corner of England. I have always loved Photography and serving in the Royal Navy as a ships Photographer, being one of my many jobs between 1972 and 1996, photographing insects in any spare time I had between long voyages to exotic places. Butterflies, would cut a very deep groove in my quest to conquer trying to take photographs of the Butterfly in the wild, and opened a window into their secret world. I started with my Fathers back garden with the Small Tortoiseshell, [when they were very common!] on an old Buddleia bush. I had bought the book by Paul Whalley called ‘Butterfly Watching' which gave good tips of where to go, and what to see, but looking at it now it certainly looks a bit dated, but never the less a very important book, to novices like I was so many years ago.
Things have really moved on with the landmark publication ‘The Millennium Atlas of Butterflies of Britain' published for 2000, which highlighted the difficulties many of our species over the country were having, and really paved the way for many other publications none more so than Hampshire's flagship publication, ‘The Butterflies of Hampshire' which was published for the millennium, this also highlighted the great enormity of the geology and wealth of Flora and Fauna in Hampshire which aids some of particular species to breed and survive.
Media coverage has expanded above all recognition, with Television, the Internet, and Newspaper and Magazine coverage being almost a weekly event during the main Butterfly season now, but twenty five years ago it was certainly a different story. I remember a very good weekly television programme called ‘The Living Isles' by Julian Pettifer, and one such wood mentioned was Pamber Forest, where they put a high rise in the main ride, which was quite a revolutionary idea in an English woodland at the time, and the programme quoted ‘ On top of the Oak canopy could be seen multitudes of Silver-Washed Fritillaries, White Admiral's, and Purple Emperors', I seem to remember nobody batted an eyelid at this statement, and now we do this sort of ‘canopy' intrusion into the butterflies lives, now is almost common place.
Of course Sir David Attenborough our patron has done Butterfly Conservation a great service, and his excellent programmes on wildlife.
My career in the Royal Navy to me too many foreign places far and wide, some of the best places were Venezuela in South America, where I was part of a group from my ship HMS Birmingham visiting Angel Falls, in 1990, and we all stayed at the site where the ‘infamous' film Arachnophobia was filmed, fortunately I never saw any large spiders, but the butterflies were fantastic, where several Swallowtails were seen flying around our huts in the very early morning light, and the visit to Angel Falls is one of my most treasured memories. I was on HMS Birmingham in 1991 I walked up Mt Kenya, doing the ‘Kip Kino' route, and there was plenty of wildlife, with many species of butterflies, I noted halfway up the Mountain, the landscape and the vegetation looks very similar to Hampshire, I found right at home, the journey took three days, and the sky at night seeing the Milky way in all its glory is a sight Ivre always thought as a highlight of my life, and when atop of Mount Kenya, seeing the sun rise over the Serengeti plain, is also a highlight In Florida on another occasion I saw many new species that I had never seen before, and of course the Monarch Butterfly was everywhere. In the West Indies I have visited many of the Islands, and most notably for butterflies was Cuba, this was on of the hottest places I've ever been too, and I saw one day just in the middle of an old dirt track hundreds of Whites and Yellow Sulphurs just mud puddling, and just to walk through them, and then they would just settle down again to feed. On board the Aircraft Carrier HMS Illustrious one day we at anchor off of Majorca, in 1988, when at night I noticed these ‘insects' flying around the upper deck lighting, at closer inspection they were hundreds of Painted Ladies, these were obviously starting on their long migration route into Europe. They were also seen during the day feeding on the upper deck where there were small puddles of salt water. I rescued I don't know how many from a sailors boot, who had failed to notice they were there, in the course of their duties. I have been to ever more places for butterflies now I have left the Navy, notably in Europe like Italy and France, I visited the Lake district in Italy
I took a more active part in Butterfly Conservation when I became the Co-ordinator of the Duke of Burgundy Butterfly for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight in 1999, and straight away the task for this butterfly was enormous. Most recording was done at only a handful of sites, however over the years the butterfly has been noted far and wide over my patch, even though most of the colonies are very small. The butterfly is recorded at present in 2009 at [20+] sites, but over this period of time we have lost it in Hampshire from at least five sites, and lost it completely from the Isle of Wight, but Hampshire is blessed with some of the best sites in the country, particularly in the Meon Valley, where the new concept of the ‘South Downs National Park' could and should enable a viable and detailed study of this butterfly at its eleventh hour of need.
I became the Purple Emperor Coordinator for Hampshire in 2001, knowing this spectacular specie from Bentley Wood, Butterwood and Botley Wood my local woodland, where before the building of the village of Whiteley I used to see it on the ground on a regular basis. One particular day in July I had a very friendly male down imbibing on my camera case for well over two hours, this sort of experience stays with you a very long time, and certainly gets you hooked. In 2002 a study of its ‘Assembly Points' was started a task not to be taken lightly, with several areas in the country where this butterfly flies in good numbers, the questions were asked where do some of them go to the afternoon? The enigma of Assembly points has answered a lot of questions, but like all the laws of nature, each year we learn more and more. The butterfly was known from many sites in Hampshire, but since this concept the butterfly has taken on a new dimension, and it is reported from far more sites than when I began coordinating this magnificent specie. Looking up into the heavens in the afternoon is far better proposition now to most Emperor Recorders, with the aid of binoculars and deck chairs, looking at butterflies in the 21st Century is now what it should be, why should ‘twitchers' have all the fun?
2009 will go down as my best year for butterflies, I have travelled to Borneo and Singapore in June and encountered numerous tropical butterflies in and around the resort we stayed at Kota Kinabalu, and in an area around Mt Kinabalu which is the highest Mountain in South East Asia. In Singapore I went to the local gardens just up from the Hotel and the Butterflies were everywhere, and the locals were fascinated by camera technique. Before I left for Borneo in May I went surveying the Butser Hill complex in Queen Elizabeth Country Park and counted up to a hundred Duke of Burgundies, probably making the site one of the largest in the country. I also had the privilege to venture onto MOD land known as Porton Down in May, and visited a site known as the Isle of Wight Hill, and here in a beautiful Beech Woodland there were good counts of the Woodland Duke of Burgundy, feeding on the good clumps of Primrose, and the rarer Pearl-Bordered Fritillary, where there good areas of Common Dog-Violet. Of course the migrating Painted Lady numbers were breathtaking in May and June, and equally again in August, when the next generation hatched out, and the Small Tortoiseshell managed to make-a-mends for several poor years. The Purple Emperor also had an excellent year, with good numbers flying many woodlands, with the prize going to Straits Enclosure where males were ‘playing' tag, flying in three's and fours up and down the main ride.
So what about the butterflies in Hampshire's future? I'm optimistic for some of the species which are on the Priority species list. The Adonis Blue has colonised several new sites since my inauguration into BBCS in 1984, although it is struggling to hold onto several sites, mainly due to weather factors I feel. The Silver-Spotted Skipper as well is holding its own, also colonising several new sites, and re-colonising old ones. The Marsh Fritillary unfortunately has not fared the same fate. In 1984 I could still find it in isolated colonies in and around Hook and Camberley in the Northern part of Hampshire, only succumbing to a Giant Tesco Store and large concentrations of House building, but it still crops up in several places year in year out, and hopefully these sites can survive, with the aid of proper management. The Small Blue has taken off, and is a plenty at most sites I visit, along with the Silver-Studded Blue. The Pearl-Bordered Fritillary is holding its own in the New Forest, but I suspect being so isolated in other parts of the county, its very hard to keep the management right for such a species, having lost it over the last 25 years at Botley Wood, Crab Wood Alice Holt Forest, and Spearywell Wood to name a few. The Small Pearl-Bordered Fritillary has fared no better, with losses in Botley Wood, a site near Portsdown Hill, and is just about hanging on in the New Forest.
I'm a great believer we can not and should not give up, on our precious Butterflies and Moths, and its important to understand that not only is the media coverage, important to gain ‘recruits' to out cause, but landowners, and especially farmers, who own so much of the land which borders our very isolated habitats where most of our common and rarer species live.
