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.
No comments:
Post a Comment