Butterflies of Bernwood

 

Bernwood Forest is a local butterfly shrine which I try to visit every year in search of Purple Emperors, but their high season always coincides with a very busy time for us and so it proved again this year. I finally found time to head over there on my bike this week, a sunny 14-mile ride which would be both enjoyable and good exercise. Or so I thought.

Alas, the weak point of my bike is the back tyre, which has to carry the weight of my considerable self. I was actually wheeling it uphill rather than riding when I heard a neat little 'Whoosh!', an experience I've not had before. My punctures are usually silent. I was about nine miles in to my trip. Did I walk for the nearest bus home? Perish the thought.

I marched on and enjoyed trying to find short cuts including one through a local golf course whose groundsman was extremely helpful in pointing me the right way. When he asked what I was doing on such a hot day, I discovered that he had encountered an Emperor himself. He told me: "I was working here and doing something to the buggy when this great big purple butterfly landed right on the machine. I'd never seen anything like it and luckily I got a photo and looked it up when I got home." 

"Well, you've seen one more than most people, including me," I told him.

This is true in terms of live ones in the UK but I've always admired the butterfly - as everyone does - because there was one in the small collection of insects given to me as a schoolboy by John Armitage, the marvellous head of natural history at Leeds City Museum whose virtues I've extolled here before. Penny and I also saw and photoed a near relative in the beautiful French village of Saint Jean de Côle in the Aquitaine in 2011. Here it is. Yum!!

There were no emperors awaiting me at Bernwood but the trip was worthwhile because of a mass of Silver-washed Fritillaries, a majestic butterfly. Here, also from a French holiday, is the species' striking underwing which explains its name:

I got to the forest about two and a half hours after the puncture and, though very hot, had a lovely time wandering about. It's not an outstandingly beautiful place as the Forestry Commission is active there and a lot of the paths are tarmac or gravel, but the grassy verges are full of flowers at this time of year and the flowers are restaurants for a lot of butterflies.

My highlight was actually just one flower, or a plantation of it, a very big burdock above a culvert which was clearly THE place for Silver-washed. At least a dozen orange males and chestnut females soared and floated over the spiky flowerheads alongside Commas, Hedge Browns and Large Skippers. Normally, fritillaries lead you a merry dance and settle only briefly, but these were drunk on burdock juice.

Given burdock's role in the invention of Velcro, it was interesting to see how some of the butterflies got slightly caught by the little curly spikes and had to be nimble to break free.

On the long plod home, I had an enjoyable chat with an expert thatcher; however hot and tired I was, he was working a lot harder.

I was kept going by my water bottle, a delicious apple which Penny had prudently provided and the occasional encounter with more butterflies including this rather late-in-the-season but very smart Marbled White.

And then my goal, after handy reconnaissance on the invaluable internet: the bus stop and a majestic ride home on the 108, a country bus which I had never previously tried. Its timings were almost as rare as Purple Emperors but fortuitously coincided with my own. There was only one other passenger to Oxford and he got off halfway.

Red Petticoats - but not what they seemed

 

I featured the magnificent Red Underwing a couple of posts ago and I was virtually certain that I would soon find one in the trap. So it turned out, with this lovely example roosting happily on an eggbox a couple of nights ago.

It was very obliging during a short photo session. I always tickle and gently shake the various underwings to overcome their great reluctance to show their vivid warning colouration, other than in a brief flash whose sudden-ness is probably part of the defence against predators. I managed to get a glimpse of the underwing too and some detailed shots of the delicate grey and slightly brown patterns on the top forewings.

Therein lay the next stage of this story. I always assume that a moth like this is the standard and common Red Underwing, partly because of the sheer number of very similar moths. None are common and most are very rare, but we have in the UK Minsmere Crimson Underwing, Rosy Underwing, French Red Underwing, Dark Crimson Underwing and Light Crimson Underwing.

I dutifully recorded my moth on iRecord as Red Underwing and thought no more of it until I got an email from iRecord today. It showed that the great moth expert Martin Townsend, co-author of the Moth Bible, had reclassified my moth first as Dark Crimson Underwing and then as Light Crimson Underwing. Both are Red Data Book species, the national UK list of endangered species, and I have never had either before. Here are all three species, from the aforesaid Bible:

I'll keep you in touch with whatever the final decision turns out to be. Meanwhile, here are some more of the current rich crop of night-time guests in the garden here:

Tree-lichen Beauty, Turnip moth about to leave, Blood-vein and Small Dusty Wave - the last on the inside of our greenhouse door.

Burnished Brass, Rosy Rustic, Iron Prominent and Dark Arches

The attractive micromoth Acrobasis advenella, also called  the Grey Knot-horn in the excellent new list of English vernacular names for micros.

And another lovely micro to finish up with, the Ringed China-mark

Glistening Gold

A lovely bright visitor came to the trap on the eve of Penny's birthday - this Gold Spot with its shining wings made up of light-reflecting and refracting scales. It is one of the best of UK moths to use in arguments with those who believe that all moths are small. brown and eat cardigans.

My beautiful thumb gives some scale in the picture above while the one below shows the colours in a slightly different but equally accurate light. There is another species called Lempke's Gold Spot which differs from this one so slightly that dissection of genitalia can be required to sort them out. Such surgery is not for me.

The Ruby Tiger below is another brightly-coloured moth although not an all-round star like the Gold Spot. You have to look closely to see the red knee-breeches shown here and the moth is very reluctant to show its pale ruby underwings except in flight.

Two stars in monochrome next, a Sallow Kitten and a Leopard moth followed by a dainty and unusually smokily-ribboned Small Scallop.

The season of Jersey Tigers has begun in the South of England, very striking, day-flying moths with their black and cream-striped top forewing and even more dramatic orange and red hindwing, usually visible only in flight - hence my rather exciting blurs. The second picture below shows the moth reflecting a very pink sunset at my grandchildren's home in Wiltshire. They are often understandably mistaken for butterflies but have a much crazier, wildly jinking flight.

Moths such as these may have helped to encourage the Royal Mail to produce its excellent new series of stamps based on moths. My late mother-in-law, who was always very interested in my moths until her death aged a week short of 101 just before Covid, wrote to the Post Office and Royal Mail asking for a set exactly like this one. Hooray that her letter has finally reached the top of the pile.

Two littlies to end with: a Common Carpet pretending to be a butterfly above, and a Double-striped Pug below with the eggbox scale to show exactly how small the moth is.

Arches, Hums and Blurrs

 

After the excitement of the Mocha as my first completely new arrival for a while, the moths have continued a high quality streak. The Black Arches, above and below with its fine antennae, is the first of the darker examples I have had in the trap; normally the area of the forewing suffused with different greys in this example is a plainer black-and-white dazzle pattern.

It was also good to find a Hummingbird Hawk nectaring on our main flower border in very hot sunshine although it skimmed off rapidly before I could get closer-up and hasn't yet returned. Ditto a fine Red Underwing which I disturbed during daylight from the gloom of an outside doorway - the usual way you see this striking, large moth because it seldom comes to light.

Unlike the Hummingbird Hawk, the Red Underwing has made a comeback, however. Our very nice neighbours, who are also learned in natural history, took an action-packed video of a second one (or possibly the original, as it flew off in their direction) zooming dementedly round their house. I won't treat you to the full, action-packed film but here are some stills, blurry because of the high-speed flying but showing the crucial glimpses of red.

They were round here in the afternoon and went home to find the moth still in residence. So, another session of Attenborough work by them and another frame clipped by me, again showing the red - and also how fast these moths fly. With many other species including the Hummingbird Hawk, you get a clearer image in a video clip. Not with Red Underwings.  Many thanks Neighbours!  Maybe the moth will pay us another call when it has spent enough time with you.

For the rest, here is a head-on view of a Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing followed by that gleaming scrap of a micromoth, the Pearl Veneer or Catoptria pinella, which is no bigger than a sunflower seed.

The composite pics below meanwhile show the wealth of 'ordinary' overnight guests in the current lovely weather - from the top left: Campion, Scarce Footman, Riband Wave and Dark Swordgrass, followed by Purple and Gold or Pyrausta purpuralis, Common Rustic, Small Magpie with a Sallow Kitten and Small Scallop. 

Finally, this Yellow Shell in the eggboxes, below, gives me a chance to compare my photo with the one in my last post of the same species disturbed by day in the hedge round our neighbouring Big Field where they are common. Modern iPhone cameras are a blessing beyond description, but the digital system can play pop with moths' colours and patterns in different lights.