In Pursuit of Butterflies Read online

  Worse, my family had moved from a peripatetic existence in the wilds of Somerset to the developing suburbia of the mid-Chilterns, where Mother had obtained a job running a conference centre. Unused to omnipresent traffic noise and houses of wealthy folk scattered intrusively everywhere, I struggled to feel even remotely at home there. Everything was Private. The countryside had been vanquished there, offering no freedom to roam. The orange glow of distant street lights obliterated the familiar stars, and the Milky Way abruptly vanished from my life. The freedom of the Somerset countryside was no more, which rendered that offered by the West Sussex countryside during term time even more important.

  Mother had had enough. She sent me on a weekend butterfly course at Pendley Manor, Tring, run by Robert Goodden of Worldwide Butterflies. He introduced me to chalk grassland as a habitat, and tipped me off about various good butterfly localities in the Chilterns that could be reached by bus or bicycle. The Chalkhill Blue came into my life that weekend, as the first males were on the wing at Totternhoe Quarries close by to Tring. We also found Small Blue larvae there, an impressive lesson and eye-opener for a fourteen-year-old.

  Inspired and informed by Goodden, I took the Aldershot & District omnibus service to Watlington, a small sleepy town at the foot of the Chilterns escarpment which, traffic apart, has not changed substantially since the summer of 1968. Watlington Hill (NT), on the scarp slope, turned out to hold a modest population of Silver-spotted Skipper and several colonies of Brown Argus in pockets of tall grass. The former was a devil to catch, darting at high speed low over the short fescue turf. But caught it was, by employing a turf-level version of cricket's sweep shot or by quickly dropping the net down on settled specimens. The National Trust may wish to contact me regarding the collecting of butterflies on its land, contrary to its bylaws.

  On the other side of the road leading up the escarpment to the delightfully named Christmas Common was an even better butterfly site, consisting of old quarry pits and a long sunken chalk-land gully. Chalkhill Blue was abundant there, and Dark Green Fritillary numerous in a nearby abandoned field. Sadly, this whole area became enveloped by scrub within 25 years. Places change.

  4 Rebellion

  The late 1960s was above all else a time of radical social change, even within boarding schools where little had altered since Edwardian times. Lindsay Anderson's film If (1968) was supposed to be a parody of contemporary public school life, but to those of us who sneaked out of such places to watch that proscribed film in local cinemas it was remarkably verbatim, and unfunny. Frustration was simmering. The system was being challenged.

  Change even penetrated the pursuit of butterflies. At Christ's Hospital, Jonah's retirement had brought to an end the supply of young enthusiasts entering the senior school, for no fresh-faced young master arrived down from Oxbridge to continue the hobby within the junior school. Furthermore, a generation of older practitioners, such as Cesar, Longhurst and McClure in my house, and Robbins in Lamb A, left for the real world, whatever that was. All of a sudden one was in a rapidly dwindling minority, within a social environment in which compliance to peer pressure increasingly meant Everything. Interest in natural history quickly became socially unacceptable in the extreme, and butterflying was deemed a gross eccentricity. Only Oates and Johnson in Coleridge A remained, and a rather fun-loving trio led by Francis Ratnieks in Lamb A (named after Charles Lamb, a contemporary and friend of Coleridge). Similar changes were doubtless taking place at that time in other public schools. Lepidoptera collecting started to become an endangered practice.

  Behavioural modifications had to be made. In consequence, I gave up collecting butterflies, though not simply because of peer pressure and rising levels of testosterone. Above all, I had become too fond of butterflies. In effect, the butterflies had collected me, having infiltrated my soul. As concessions to peer pressure, bird nesting, fishing and moths were abandoned, but the power of the relationship with Nature offered through butterflying meant too much and had to remain, and intensify. The Rubicon had already been crossed (probably on May 19th 1968). The way forward necessitated bearing the cross of eccentricity. Acceptable interests in the disparate likes of Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and the Incredible String Band afforded a social lifeline.

  The problem is very much alive today. Young children are fired up about Nature, wondrously, only to feel obliged to ditch that enthusiasm the moment they enter secondary school, in obedience to what they believe is expected of them by their peers. They may end up sacrificing themselves in order to be like others, or more precisely, to be as they feel others are and expect them to be. It happened, visibly, to my own children when they moved up to secondary school. Preventing this breakdown is one of the major challenges facing our relationship with Nature.

  In the woods, 1969 was a year of consolidation and pushing limits back further. Okehurst Woods, way to the west near Five Oaks, were discovered, and found to be alive with both species of pearl-bordered fritillary, especially selene. St Leonard's Forest, to the east, was finally conquered, many of its young plantations also alive with the two fritillaries, and its buckthorn bushes stuccoed with Brimstone larvae.

  At the end of a June dominated by cricket and exams the woods were alive only with myriad Meadow Browns, which were bib-bobbing everywhere along the rides. The White Admirals appeared on July 2nd in Marlpost Wood and, as in 1968, an expedition on the first Sunday of the month to far-flung terra nova, this time the woods around Loxwood in pursuit of reputed High Brown Fritillaries, ended with retreat in heavy rain as an unwelcome wet spell commenced. Life was repeating itself.

  Yet again, iterum atque iterum, everything hinged on the final weekend of term. The Saturday was lost to cricket, but the Sunday was hot and clear. Marlpost Wood beckoned and received, but yielded only a goodly number of rather worn White Admiral and a Silver-washed Fritillary, then an extremely scarce butterfly in the district. Once again, term ended just as the Purple Emperor season was beginning.

  Shortly afterwards, on July 21st 1969, having stayed awake all night watching the American moon landing, I R P Heslop caught a pristine male Purple Emperor aberration lugenda (an excessively rare and treasured colour form, or variation, in which the white bands are missing). This was close to where the main car park in Bentley Wood, in south-east Wiltshire, is now situated, a place where people gather each summer to view this butterfly. ‘Never have I taken an insect more easily! It was just flying peacefully along the track at knee height,’ he recalled in his diary. He had just retired from teaching Classics. A week later, close by, Heslop was to glimpse his last Purple Emperor, for he died the following spring. We will not see his likes again. But oh, that he had taught Latin at Christ's Hospital! We would have slain every gerund and gerundive in Christendom, and conquered every wood and down in the glorious land of Sussex.

  Watlington Hill in the Chilterns redeemed a largely sunny but wasted summer. A male Clouded Yellow patrolled the lower slope at speed, Chalkhill Blues abounded across the road from the National Trust land, Dark Green Fritillaries feasted on thistles and Silver-spotted Skippers were out in numbers over the flinty turf. Shortly afterwards, Holly Blues became prominent, seemingly throughout southern England. Prior to this I had scarcely encountered this azure jewel. It was to erupt the following spring.

  The next year, 1970, was indeed a year of eruptions. Poetry sprang into my life, inspired by a brilliant young English master who understood and taught the importance of metaphor, and who introduced me to the writings of Thoreau and Edward Thomas (W H Hudson and Richard Jefferies had already been discovered). Girls were being courted, a trio of pretty Horsham wenches by ardent but inaptly dressed young males. Holly Blues were everywhere, for a fine summer was developing. Examinations had erupted like acne, and threatened to ruin the summer. May weather oscillated between extremes. Grizzled and Dingy skippers appeared in the woods around May 10th, Duke of Burgundy a week later, and Pearl-bordered Fritillaries on the 20th, in superb numbers. Six colonies of the
latter were in existence that May within a two-mile radius of the school. Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary was well out by the end of that month, in at least eight separate colonies.

  Exams generate excellent weather, and did so as usual in 1970. Relief was essential. On June 13th Barter, Last, Oates and Ratnieks consumed a considerable volume of King & Barnes bitter at the Blue Ship, a simple ale house at a lonely hamlet called The Haven in Okehurst Woods, north of Billingshurst, and sobered up by swimming noisily in a nearby lake. Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries and Meadow Browns abounded in the adjoining young conifer plantations, but were curiously out of focus and duplicitous that hot afternoon.

  White Admirals were out in numbers in Marlpost Wood by June 26th. Common Blues abounded in the more open, grassy rides. Ringlet, Small Skipper and Purple Hairstreak were well out by the end of June, and a thriving colony of White-letter Hairstreak was discovered on a tall English Elm close to the First XI cricket pavilion. A stunted Ash tree in a young conifer plantation near Dragons Green harboured dozens of Purple Hairstreaks, which had dropped down from the overheated oaks to feed on honey dew or sticky buds. Three or four could be netted with a single swipe of a net on a length of cut Hazel. The heat intensified, and resulted in another under-age drinking session, this time at the Black Rabbit near Arundel, involving a gaggle of girls. Exams rightly faded into insignificance. Something Big had to give. The anticyclone intensified, something greater than testosterone was rising.

  Thursday July 9th was hot and sullen, buzzing with biting clegs and throbbing with merciless hay fever below solid stratus clouds. The very air itself was pulsating, as if something from another dimension was seeking to break through and conquer a world begging for radical, spiritual change. And indeed it did, at 5.15 pm precisely. Having waited till the last moment before human patience broke, what the Victorian collectors called His Imperial Majesty, the Monarch of all the Butterflies and the Emperor of the Woods finally entered my life. This drama took place just north of Dragons Green, forcing me to my knees. I missed supper, roll call and half of prep (evening homework), and was consequently gated (confined to school grounds) for the remainder of term. But by now I served other masters, and was back in the woods on the following days. At this point the school rather gave up on me, perhaps recognising that my real schooling was taking place elsewhere.

  The problem was, of course, that term was ending. Another assault on that bastion of recalcitrance, St Leonard's Forest, ended this time in heat stroke and a large female Silver-washed Fritillary. Nothing more was seen of iris, but at least He had been seen, momentarily, but forever – for some visions haunt eternally, particularly those that are real. That lone male, patrolling the high oak edge, flies on within my soul.

  August was hot. Holly Blues were everywhere. Two weeks were spent on Guernsey, in the company of best friend and radical thinker Nigel Fleming, whose parents were Guernsey folk. Gatekeepers were profuse there, in multitudes, everywhere; Common Blues and Small Coppers abounded in all open places; and Pleinmont Point, on the south-west side of the island, revealed a massive population of Grayling and groups of scarlet-headed Glanville Fritillary larvae.

  In mid-August time was spent in Bernwood Forest, on the clay vale north of Oxford, with Dr Roger Clarke, a retired GP, stalwart of what was then known as BBONT (the county wildlife trust) and an ardent servant of the Purple Emperor. He introduced me to Heslop's book, Notes & Views of the Purple Emperor, taught me how to search for Purple Emperor eggs and larvae, and indeed for the adults. He bred the butterfly annually, sometimes in numbers, for release back into the forest, in an attempt to remedy some of the damage done by a then-uncaring Forestry Commission. Bernwood that August was alive with hairstreaks, not just Purple Hairstreaks but the Brown Hairstreak, hitherto an elusive beast found only in the form of occasional eggs in and around Marlpost Wood. I have still never seen Brown Hairstreak in such numbers as in the glades of Waterperry Wood, the southernmost block of Bernwood, that August, and it is a butterfly I have seen annually since. As many as half a dozen were in view at once, high in the oaks, mingling and squabbling with their smaller and greyer cousins. Males descended to feed on bramble and Angelica flowers. It must have been an exceptional butterfly year.

  But revolution was fiercely in the air. The Isle of Wight Festival at the end of August attracted 600,000 young people, including the odd one who had travelled to see the poet–songwriter Leonard Cohen and encounter the exquisitely beautiful Adonis Blue on the south-facing slope of Compton Down. Life then consisted of an unsustainable juxtaposition of diametrically opposed worlds.

  By 1971, butterfly enthusiasts, and indeed naturalists, amongst the boys at Christ's Hospital could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. This indicates what a wonderful job old Jonah had done in firing up ten-year-olds, most of whom were from urban backgrounds and could not tell the difference between a Blue Tit and a Great Tit. The woods to the south were then effectively mine. Moreover, as a senior pupil one was now entitled to a bicycle (though I had already had a rickety one secreted in a thicket for a year or so). Frequent if short visits to the woods were fully enabled.

  May started fine, such that the woodland fritillaries emerged early, but shortly afterwards cloud descended. The solution was simple: search for larvae, and carry on regardless. White-letter Hairstreak larvae proved to be numerous on mature Wych Elms along Crookhorn Lane, an ancient drove-way that ran straight through Madgeland Wood. Even a Brown Hairstreak larva was found, after hours of searching on unsuitable old Blackthorn. Inspired, I went for White Admiral larvae, and found them at an average of one per hour. But extensive searches during a dull early June for Purple Emperor larvae produced, insultingly, a larva of the wrong emperor – the Emperor Moth.

  The weather improved at the end of June, bringing out the White Admiral on July 2nd. But it was a ‘late’ season. Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries lasted well into July, especially in St Leonard's Forest, and I even saw a Dingy Skipper in Madgeland Wood on July 5th, a very late date for this spring butterfly in a wood. July intensified into brooding heat.

  Again everything came down to the last Sunday of the summer term. Marlpost Wood produced a good showing of White Admiral and Ringlet, the latter then a rather local butterfly in the district. Then, in the early afternoon, a large and pristine male Purple Emperor chose to fly low along the lane past a sallow-rich copse near Dragons Green. With a twirl, he hopped over the Hazel hedge and ascended into the oaks, smashing someone's dreams in the process. There was only one option: go home, do the bored teenager act for a few perfunctory days, then return to camp out in the woods, and enter the real world.

  Camping wild in the woods, though decidedly uncool in terms of teenage behavioural values, was a remarkably easy thing to do in that era. Southwater Forest was virtually unvisited, at least outside the hunting season. The few people who walked dogs in the area favoured the lanes, which at their busiest produced a maximum of one vehicle every ten minutes. These were mainly retired farm workers, gentle friends who knew how to turn a blind eye and could recognise a fellow lover of their rural idyll. Someone called Bert on a red Ferguson tractor used to mow the rides in midsummer, unnecessarily so as it merely massacred a wonderful show of Cat's-ears. The Forestry Commission rarely appeared. Armed with Thoreau and a small tent I entered my own personal Walden. ‘I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor,’ began Thoreau. But that first night, long after the embers of a small camp fire had faded, a Stoat caught a Rabbit some way down the ride. The piercing screams were like those of a banshee. It took two petrified minutes to realise what was going on, and considerably longer to calm down. Then it began to rain, but there is something wonderfully calming about the patter of gentle raindrops on a tent roof. The woods had accepted me as one of their own. On subsequent evenings I watched Fox cubs playing merrily just a few metres down the ride.

  The first day was largely cloudy, clearing up later, for the woods knew how I should start. Induction took the form o
f experiencing the evening flight of the Purple Hairstreak, for the first time. Hitherto, this had been an indolent creature of the oak tops, but now it suddenly revealed its true self, dragging the young observer into its proper world: twenty or thirty of them dancing in courting pairs or trios, and dashing about along the oak edges, in the delight of July evening air. The truth dawned: they are crepuscular, becoming quiescent during the heat of the day! That evening, lying in the dust along a stretch of baked ride I found a single blue feather from a Jay's wing. It was a token of acceptance from the woods, and perhaps from the Emperor of the Woods himself, the Purple Emperor. I fastened it to my hat band. That act established a personal tradition, for almost every July I find a Jay's feather along a ride, and wear it in my hat. Years later I found an appealing passage in an account of collecting in the New Forest during the immortal summer of 1893: to paraphrase, the writer had stumbled into paradise in searing heat, sat down beneath a veteran oak and placed a cast Jay's feather in his hat – as a token of acceptance.

  Suitably hatted, I was thus ready to be finally accepted into the realm of His Imperial Majesty on Thursday July 22nd 1971. Herself, as the Empress has become known, conducted the first initiations, flying into the crowns of two tall sallows, doubtless to lay eggs, but way out of reach. Four high-flying males were seen, aloof and far off, in a treetop world.

  Saturday the 24th began wet and wild, but cleared by noon into a sunny but windy afternoon. Rather by accident on my part, but perhaps by the deliberate design of a higher authority, I discovered the high ashram of the Purple Emperor in the Dragons Green copses. There, a clump of four tall Silver Birch trees towered above a canopy of Hazel, sallow and planted Yew on a low wooded summit. Downwind, to the south-west, was a twenty-year-old conifer plantation choked with sallows, a fine breeding ground for iris. Two or three Purple Emperor males battled high up in the lee of this birch clump, dominated by one particularly large and distinctive male. I named him Osiris. The same weather and activity occurred the following day, then atmospheric pressure rose as an anticyclone moved in from the south-west.