A newly discovered enthusiasm has been seeking out butterflies in their favoured habitats. This was seeded in part by reading Patrick Barkham’s ‘The Butterfly Isles’, in which he describes his mission to see all of Britain’s breeding butterflies within a calendar year. That sounds easy, but the realities of butterfly life cycles, scarcity of some species, and the vagaries of our weather make it far from straightforward. In 2022 I managed to see 45 of the different British species, including the beautiful sIlver-washed fritillary that features as the logo on the top of each page on this website. The picture was taken in June 2022 in Oxfordshire’s Warburg nature reserve.

June 2022 - All aflutter

I blame Patrick Barkham. He’s clearly a decent and sensitive man, but I blame him all the same. I hadn’t even heard of Patrick Barkham until a couple of fellow students mentioned his name last October. And then we got to meet him, on December 6th 2021 at 7pm. And now… I blame him.

Some context may be useful. The fellow students, who escape censure because I can’t remember exactly which ones recommended Patrick’s writing, are new-found friends on my Masters course. In that whirl of a residential at the start of the course, all of us were flinging out names of travel and nature writers we thought the others should know about. Our meeting with Patrick wasn’t a real one, a face-to-face encounter. Rather, it was an online session in our ‘Meet the Author’ series. We have these as an integral part of our studies.

Before such sessions we are guided to look at some of the author’s work. I can’t imagine anyone gets through everything we’re supposed to read, but we make a pretty good fist of it. On this occasion, I was nicely ahead of the game because I’d got going with Patrick’s book The Butterfly Isles in good time. It had me hooked within four words of the introduction: ‘Behind the marram grass…’. I’m a big fan of marram grass. It’s a great story that focuses on a particular quest, but it goes well beyond that and gently reveals a very human tale. I loved it.

So, what is it that I’m blaming Patrick for? Another addiction, that’s what: the newly acquired need to seek out butterflies and their habitats; another race against the life clock and weather dynamics, with accompanying logistical challenges; a further tick-list obsession to resist. Let me tell you about some of the symptoms…

Perhaps they’re not so much symptoms as behavioural patterns. How about the first time I suspected something had stirred within me? This spring, adding another layer of joy to the first sight or sound of the various returning migrant birds, my eyes were on the alert for the first butterfly I would see in 2022. Where would it be? What would it be? Maybe a lemon-meringue coloured Brimstone? Or the brindled underside of a Peacock? In those three and more winter months since reading The Butterfly Isles, I hadn’t realised that sitting within me was such heightened anticipation for spotting my first springtime flutterer.

As it turned out, Brimstone won by a matter of seconds – and all within 100 yards of my Oxfordshire front door. In a moment of childlike excitement, unfitting in the eyes of some for one about to turn 60, my mood soared. I was surprised by my own elation. This year, it wasn’t the first burst of chiffchaff song that fired spring’s starting gun, but that floaty, flighty, flappy flash of yellow. Not that I became unfaithful to the chiffchaffs and successive returnees; but something had changed in our relationship.

A couple of weeks on and I knew for sure something was up. Another addiction that’s had me in its grip down the years (mild or serious, depending on your perspective) is football-watching. Now, admittedly not on the way to see the team I’ve supported since childhood, I was heading as a neutral to a match in late March. My attention was fully taken by the presence of so many Orange-tips on the roadside verge, feasting on the streetlight-bright dandelions. Not that many weeks later, I can’t even remember who the local Oxford team were playing that afternoon. I don’t even remember if the game was eventful. The single memory that abides with me is watching those butterflies. 

It's not that I’d overlooked butterflies before I read Patrick’s book. I knew all the common ones and could tell them apart readily enough, but I was leagues short of being an expert, and nowhere near as sure of my ID skills as I am with birds. It’s just that it took The Butterfly Isles, with its exquisitely delivered mix of description and context to get me well and truly hooked on to the weird, wonderful and imperfectly understood world of butterflies.

And so it was that a springtime walk around the local park with my daughter’s dog became the time I checked out the emerging Holly Blues. Before I knew it, I was on a Saturday trip to the far end of the Chilterns, having registered to join up with a Butterfly Conservation walk. It’s fair to say I was ‘in deep’ by now. Quite literally, in fact, as we descended into Incombe Hole with its butterfly-conducive micro-climate. And what a treat we had down there: Green Hairstreaks (‘peach’ ones too, unlike the tatty specimen I’d seen close to the Thames the week before), Small Blues, Brown Argus, and – the highlight - dainty, characterful, noble Dukes of Burgundy.

I learnt a few things in Incombe Hole that morning, as indeed from other walks to butterfly haunts. I saw how much there is to learn, for so long as my legs and eyes remain up to the job of following and spotting butterflies. The Butterfly Conservation walk leader was a man of great knowledge and generosity of spirit, a fine teacher. It became obvious how much patience is going to be needed to complement my enthusiasm. To my relief, I also recognised that there are kindred spirits in this new-found endeavour.  

It was wonderful to go on that walk with fellow enthusiasts, not least my mentor from the course, who knows her butterflies way better than I do. That said, something I already knew from watching birds is that ‘flying solo’ and self-finding interesting species brings an added satisfaction. Having the chalk-sloped BBOWT (Berks, Bucks & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust) reserve at Hartslock to myself was a real treat. It didn’t matter that the Green Hairstreak was on its last legs, because I found it for myself. Spotting the totally contrasting (not least because it was very ‘fresh’) Marsh Fritillary and gazing at it from feet away for a full 10 minutes was as good as, say, watching the Lesser-Spotted Woodpecker at Arne with my daughter, all those years ago.

Taking a three-week trip up to the Highlands and then homewards via St Cuthbert’s Way allowed me to extend my butterfly range. And what an exciting dimension I now have for those days when I’m not (obsessively, addictively?) working my way to the summit cairns of Munros. A couple of ‘rest’ days on this trip gave me the chance to look for the very localised Chequered Skippers at key sites. I wasn’t disappointed at either Glasdrum Wood or Allt Mhuic, both important and picturesque reserves. I was completely smitten with the feisty and doughty gems, resplendent in their black and gold. Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries at Glasdrum and a near swarm of Green Hairstreaks at Allt Mhuic added to the thrill of it all. And it was at Allt Mhuic that it dawned on me that what I was feeling was the same childlike pleasure I had years ago when seeing and watching a new bird species for the first time.

I mentioned summit cairns. These are always special places – and hard to leave. Sometimes they are made more special by wildlife sightings: I’m thinking snow buntings, dotterel, and on still days various insects that I struggle to identify. But everyone recognises a Red Admiral, don’t they? And it seemed fitting in this my year of butterfly awakening that I was greeted at the top of the fourth and last of the Mullardoch Munros by a lone specimen, fluttering gently around the cairn on a hot and breezeless day, almost 3500 feet up. Just the two of us, in perfect solitude. I’d only had such a summit greeting twice before, most memorably on Braeriach when I also saw and heard a snow bunting singing gloriously as it made circuits of the Coire Bhrochain.

My time in the Scottish hills is never long enough, but this time I had a week’s pause on the way south. Our walk along St Cuthbert’s Way was not in most miles butterfly-rich, but that wasn’t for lack of new-found alertness on my part. At the right contour levels, a walk over The Cheviot offered masses of Small Heaths. On the moorland after Wooler we went through a stretch where Chimney Sweeper moths (yes, I know that’s a whole new ball game that lies in wait) were everywhere to be seen. On the north-east tip of Holy Island, I saw my first Dark Green Fritillary. It surprised me with its size and the olive-green shade on its underside. I didn’t get as long a look at it as I wanted – it flew off into the marram grass, as if to remind me of the book that got me into all of this.

It's quite clear to me that I won’t be able to rinse this new fascination out of me. Since arriving home, I’ve been out to another local BBOWT reserve, where I got to grips with telling apart Small and Large Skippers, and fell in love with the gliding flight of Silver-washed Fritillaries. They seemed to enjoy aiming themselves directly at foreheads, before firing themselves up almost vertically. Dazzling! And just this afternoon, on a walk from the door to see this year’s edition of the Marbled Whites I’ve enjoyed for some years, I had the great excitement of finding Small and Large Skippers ‘on my patch’. I paused briefly to condemn myself for failing to notice these previously, before reminding myself that it’s better to celebrate the joy of discovery than tick oneself off for showing ignorance.

I started by blaming Patrick Barkham. I’m sure you didn’t think I was being serious when I wrote that. In truth, it’s that classic thing of Patrick having responsibility but not blame. The Butterfly Isles, and how he talked to us about that book is entirely responsible for switching me on to the joy of butterfly-watching, and, more significantly, their importance in our fragile eco-system. By coincidence, I read a Guardian article by Patrick a couple of days ago. He wrote about the possible demise of Swallowtails in their scattered and vulnerable Norfolk territories. How good that he goes way beyond being a butterfly enthusiast to being a butterfly advocate. Late to the party, I’ll try to do the same.

PS I did make it to 60, just yesterday. And what was the treat of the day? You guessed it: a trip to see butterflies. We headed over to Daneway Banks in Gloucestershire. My first-ever Large Blue was there and waiting for me just a few yards past the gate into the reserve – a real ‘WOW!’ moment. Masses of Marbled Whites darted, fed and generally cavorted over the hillside on a blue-sky afternoon. I quietly thanked Patrick Barkham for his role in introducing me to such delights.

September 2022 - Feather Finds

This piece was written for my monthly Radley News column - I’ve been writing these since April 2020. Usually I focus on one or two bird species, but this time I decided to say a little about feathers and explain why late summer is a great time to find them.

The coming of September signals one of the year’s turning points. The days are shortening, flowers are few and faded, butterflies almost absent. By the end of the month, we may well have a sense of the mists and colder air to come. Birds on the other hand – apart from departing migrants – seem more present than in the dog days of summer. They may not be singing for a mate as they did in spring, they may not be busying themselves with nest-building and chick-feeding, but they are more visible. And many of them are looking at their best. It’s quite a transformation in many species, when you remember how bedraggled some of the parent birds looked by the end of the breeding period.

The key to the makeover of birds is in the shedding of feathers and subsequent regrowth of a fresh set. This part of a bird’s life cycle accounts for why the bird world seems to go quiet for a period, which usually coincides with August. This summer’s prolonged spell of dry and hot weather meant that this period started weeks earlier than in many years. It’s the phase of the year when I am most eagerly on the lookout for feathers, hoping to spot coloured or otherwise interesting specimens that reveal where birds have been. Just keeping an eye open usually leads to rewards. The ancient woodland on my Oxfordshire doorstep has thrown up good feather finds this year: buzzard, green woodpecker, jay and red kite, among others.

Feathers are the cover by which humans tend to judge the book of a bird. The eye is drawn to the red of a robin, the sapphire or terracotta of a kingfisher. But many feathers are relatively plain, even dull. Looked at superficially, they are functional, enabling flight or providing insulation. But that doesn’t do them justice. I’d recommend looking at any feather through a magnifying lens, to allow a glimpse of the subtle coloration and the distinctive textures of different feather types.

It’s the many and obvious ‘contour’ feathers that steal the show – long wing and tail feathers, shorter body feathers. Contour feathers are a good identification challenge: finding a black and iridescent green/blue magpie tail feather remains a joy; a black and white barred great-spotted woodpecker primary feather always gets added to my collection. Enthusiasts can seek a precise technical term for every feather they pick up, but anyone who enjoys observing birds will want to tell the difference between the contour feathers and the fluffy down feathers that provide the crucial insulation without which a bird wouldn’t survive for long. Strictly speaking, there’s a third type of feather on any bird; these are the ‘filoplumes’, which are usually small and non-visible, but sometimes – as in a cormorant’s display crest - very important to the look of a bird, and part of the appeal to a prospective mate.

The world of primaries, secondaries and greater coverts (just a few of the technical terms for feather types) is fascinating and complex, not least because many bird species show different feathers at different ages and in different seasons. It’s well worth trying to understand how an individual feather fits into the overall picture, and how the groups of feathers work together to allow movement in air, on ground, or through water. These different contexts help to account for the wonderful variety of feathers. Birds come in so many shapes and forms: blackbirds don’t leave a perch or the ground for long, divers hardly ever leave water, house martins need to be able to travel to faraway destinations, where they encounter hobbies with wings designed to overtake and outmanoeuvre them.

Without feathers, birds just wouldn’t be birds. And a bird needs to have feathers in good condition, if it’s going to flourish. That’s why so much time and effort is invested in washing and preening, and why the annual renewing of feathers is necessary. It’s a risky phase from which the feather-moulters of summer are now emerging – a low-key but high stakes spell for birds. That’s something worth remembering next time you’re out walking and a bright – or not-so-bright – plume catches your eye.

January 2022 - Four Seasons – selected for reading at the Read It Wild event

Winter

Like the double bass, you are the big beast of the seasons. Your heavy skies carry snow and threat. Darkly you suck back flora and fungi. But your months are not all sombre: lengthening days reassure with early hazel catkins, and woodpeckers hammer trunks to proclaim the vernal awakening.

Spring

Violinic in your viridescence, you are vibrancy. Dancing notes of glassy colour lift the veil on a bonanza of celandines and bluebells. Your starting gun is fired: the locals wake up, African winterers reappear. Is there anything more ‘you’ than the ‘bubble and squeak’ of reed and sedge warblers?

Summer

In the limelight too briefly, your riches are tortoiseshells and fritillaries, screaming swifts, and blackcaps with their rich timbre.  Your blooms, broods and harvest boon pluck on our heartstrings like pizzicato on a viola. And then the silence, your caesura, when songsters lie low and foreboding preludes the equinox.

Autumn

The veil is replaced when swallows depart, blackberries become desiccated, leaves fall. Only fungi boast you as their phase. Yes, like waxcaps, there is something silky and sensuous about you, with your muffled calm and lyrical transcendence. You are the ‘cello of the seasons, instrument of rounded, wafting sustenance.