Tag Archives: British butterflies

Sunshine in a butterfly

04 Monday Aug 2025

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I’ve been away for another mini break, staying once again in Weymouth, on Dorset’s south coast, for four nights, spending my three and a half days surrounded by birds and butterflies (also crowds of summertime beach visitors, though, fortunately for me, most of them weren’t in Weymouth for the same kind of wildlife as I was). With cool winds and lengthy spells of drizzle, the weather wasn’t as good as during my visit in early June, but I saw lots of lovely creatures that I will share with you over the coming week.

First up today is the first of four new-for-2025 butterfly species I saw, this gorgeous Clouded yellow (Colias croceus), a butterfly I don’t see in south Wales every year as they’re migrants from Europe and their appearance on our shores depends a lot on weather and wind direction and how their population is faring. This sighting was particularly welcome, as I had spent Tuesday morning wandering around the RSPB’s Radipole reserve in almost constant drizzle, then headed for an afternoon wander around RSPB Lodmoor. This little drop of sunshine fluttered up right in front of me when I got to Lodmoor, a sign of the lovely afternoon to follow.

Glorious Graylings

16 Wednesday Jul 2025

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Last Tuesday’s walk was strenuous but the result of my efforts was magical!

As I try to do around this time every year, I caught a train up to Bargoed, then trudged down to the River Rhymney, up the steep slope on the other side to Aberbargoed, then up the even steeper hill that is the former colliery spoil tip.

Why? Because this is the closest and most accessible location I know where I might find Grayling butterflies.

And, yes, as you can clearly see from the extravagance of photographs in this post, my quest was successful.

In fact, I saw more Graylings this year than in any previous year, and they were also more widely spread across the site than I have seen previously.

The national population of Graylings has plummeted in recent decades and they are now officially classified as an endangered species, so their abundance was particularly heartening to see.

It may be that this year’s warm weather suits them, though I think it is likely also to be at least one of the reasons they have dispersed more widely across the tip; the heat means plants are not producing as much nectar so the butterflies have to fly further to find food.

That did mean I was able to photograph these glorious Graylings on a variety of wildflowers and in settings other than them simply sitting on the coal spoil, which made my time spent amongst them even more special.

Roaming Rodborough Common

11 Friday Jul 2025

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On my last full day in Gloucestershire I caught the train to Stroud and spent several hours roaming around Rodborough Common, another hot spot for butterflies and a location with stunning views over the beautiful surrounding hills and valleys of the Cotswolds.

And here they were again, those gorgeous flying black-and-white chequerboards, the Marbled whites. After Tuesday’s remarkable butterfly numbers, I already had more than enough photos of Marbled whites but, as any photographer knows, you can always do better, so I couldn’t resist taking more images.

Though the top plateau of the Common is relatively flat, the hillsides are steep and criss-crossed with narrow paths, for use by people and the cattle that help to maintain the grassland habitat.

This was a 15-butterfly-species day, with many of the more common butterflies I see in other locations. This Small heath posed very prettily for me. And the sight of the blue caused a slight heart flutter, as the very rare Large blues have been re-introduced and are thriving here, and there was a slight chance I might see one. However, my sighting was of a Common blue; it was the end of the season for Large blues and I understand they are more likely to be seen on neighbouring Minchinhampton Common, so an earlier visit to this location is already on the list for next year.

Fortunately, a refreshing breeze was blowing across the Common so my choice of this bench for a lunch stop was just perfect.

Prior to my visit, a fellow butterfly enthusiast I follow on social media had posted of his sighting of singles of Dark green fritillary and Silver-washed fritillary, and had kindly given me details of where I might look for them. And I was lucky – I also saw singles of these two beauties.

And then it was time to walk back down the hill and in to Stroud to catch the train back to Cheltenham. What a fabulous day to end the fabulous three days of my mini break!

A day in Tiddesley Wood

10 Thursday Jul 2025

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My main aim for my little trip to Cheltenham was to try to see my first ever Purple emperor butterfly: I failed. Yet, in spite of that failure, and the late afternoon train chaos (caused by a fault at Birmingham New Street station) that meant I arrived back at my guest house almost two hours later than planned, I had the most wonderful day in Tiddesley Wood in Worcestershire.

The reason this was such a wonderful day was the sheer abundance of butterflies I saw in this woodland, an abundance that has been very sadly lacking in recent years at the various locations I visit in south Wales. The first treat was getting very good views of several White admirals as they were gliding along the woodland rides. (The previous week I’d been to Slade Wood, in Gwent, the only local place I can find this species and seen two, but only distantly and fleetingly.)

The second source of delight was the profusion of Silver-washed fritillaries living in the wood. These are big showy butterflies, the largest of Britain’s fritillaries, and they thrive in the wide wildflower-filled rides of woodlands like Tiddesley. The only location where I’d ever seen such a large quantity before was on a visit to Lower Woods Nature Reserve in south Gloucestershire back in 2019 so I was in butterfly heaven watching them at Tiddesley.

And then there were the ‘ordinary’ butterflies, like this handsome little Brown argus, a gang of which were patrolling small territories along the edges of the rides.

And this stunning Painted lady that flew right to my feet, as if to insist that it was also worthy of a photograph. I was happy to oblige.

For those interested, the total butterfly species list for the day was 19. They were: Ringlet, Meadow brown, Speckled wood, Gatekeeper, Small skipper, Large skipper, Brown argus, Small white, Large white, Green-veined white, Marbled white, Brimstone, Red admiral, Comma, Peacock, Small copper, Painted lady, White admiral, and Silver-washed fritillary. I may have missed out on seeing my first Purple emperor but I headed home smiling after a magical day in the woods.

An exuberance of Marbled whites

08 Tuesday Jul 2025

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The first full day of last week’s mini break, based in Cheltenham, was forecast to be the hottest day of the year so far so, rather than catch a train to one of the nearby locations I was planning to visit, I decided to stay in the Cheltenham area. I still ended up red-faced and sweaty after a six-hour eight-mile walk up and down and around Leckhampton Hill and Charlton Kings Common but what a fabulous day it was! As well as 13 other species of butterfly, I saw more Marbled whites than I’ve ever seen in my life before. I stopped counting at 50; they were everywhere, especially on the Knapweed flowers, which seemed to be their favourite nectar source.

As I didn’t take many landscape photos during this walk, I’ve included in my little slide show a few images from the last time I walked this way, in early June 2023, just to show you something of this beautiful place. You can see how much browner everything is this year after all our hot weather and with little rain to water the plants. It was a magical day!

The Gatekeeper and the Painted lady

04 Friday Jul 2025

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During the three days from to 25 to 28 June I saw six new species of butterfly: Gatekeeper, White-letter hairstreak, Essex skipper, White admiral, Silver-washed fritillary and Painted lady. Seeing so many in such a short time was an amazing experience, and I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent watching each and every one of them.

Disappointingly, the only ones I can show you reasonable images of are the Gatekeeper (above) and the Painted lady (below).

The other species were either flitting around high in the tree tops (White-letter hairstreak), paused for the briefest of moments on some flowers before disappearing in to the farm field behind (Essex skipper), weren’t stopping for a moment in their endless quest for a female (a Silver-washed fritillary exits stage left), or weren’t stopping at all ever (not even a blurry photo of the two White admirals I saw).

Large whites and parasitism, part 2

24 Tuesday Jun 2025

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A week after my sighting of Large white butterfly larvae that had been parasitised by wasps (see yesterday’s blog post) I returned to the same location to see what might have changed during that time and was surprised to see six pupae, beautiful sculptural objects whose markings varied depending on how long it was since they had pupated. These can’t have been the parasitised larvae I don’t think, so there must have been a large number of larvae munching unnoticed in the grassy area below the signage they were on.

This time, as well as these pupae, a few parasitised larvae and a few caterpillars that looked normal but may still have had wasp larvae in their bodies, there was a new species of parasitic wasp in residence. They looked completely different to the wasp I’d seen the previous week and, rather than the larvae, these tiny wasps were all congregating around the Large white pupae.

As usual, I took a lot of photos and, when I got home, set about researching the possibilities. This time, my guide book offered no assistance but googling produced one probable answer. There exists a wasp that is actually named the White butterfly pupal parasitoid wasp, scientific name Pteromalus puparum, which seems the likely culprit, though this hasn’t yet been confirmed by any experts. I’m intending to revisit the site to see what’s happened while I’ve been away on my little holiday.

Large whites and parasitism, part 1

23 Monday Jun 2025

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Though I’ve been in Wales almost 10 years and was fascinated by British butterflies even before I settled here, I only saw my first Large white caterpillars in June last year. So, when I spotted several more on the large advertising signage fencing off a local building site, I was delighted … until I looked more closely (and just a warning, this is a bit gruesome!).

The larvae were surrounded by small yellow cocoons and, when I looked even closer, I could see small yellowish larvae squirming between the bodies of the caterpillars and the cocoons. It is highly likely that the Large whites have been parasitised by the wasp Cotesia glomerata. In Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies, Peter Eeles writes that the wasp

deposits between 15 and 80 eggs inside each young larva that it parasitizes. The wasp larvae feed on the layer of fat beneath the skin of their host, thereby avoiding vital organs, and, when their host is fully grown, break through the skin and pupate within yellow cocoons on or near their host.

If this wasn’t gruesome enough for one morning’s finds, I then noticed a tiny wasp amongst the cocoons. At first, I thought it must be one of the Cotesia glomerata that had hatched, but no. When I checked at home later, a quick internet image search revealed that this did not resemble C. glomerata and, on Wikipedia, I found the information that C. glomerata is itself parasitised by a couple of other wasp species, Lysibia nana [it is listed as L. nanus in British taxonomic listings] and Gelis agilis. I’ve just been reading that the female G. agilis is wingless so I’m wondering if the wasp I saw is L. nanus. As this species is rarely recorded and there are no Welsh records, I’ve sent a query to the parasitic wasp expert at the Natural History Museum; I’ll update this post if/when I get an answer.

**UPDATE** This is the response I received from Dr Gavin Broad from the Natural History Museum: ‘You are correct, your wasps are most probably Lysibia nanus. There is a very similar species, Lysibia tenax, more rarely recorded but with much the same hosts. I don’t believe it is actually a separate species and L. nanus is certainly the usual suspect reared from Cotesia glomerata cocoons.’

The Marbled white and the Skylark

21 Saturday Jun 2025

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Today’s blog title puts me in mind of one of Aesop’s fables. I’m sure there was one where the butterfly was tired and asked the bird if it could ride on its back but the bird ended up eating it? Just kidding! Before I sign off from my blogs about my Weymouth trip I just wanted to share two more random moments …

The Marbled white butterfly (Melanargia galathea), though common in many parts of Britain, is rarely seen in my part of coastal south Wales, so it was a special treat to see three on the wing in Weymouth. The first was a distant blur in a field in the Wildlife Trust reserve Lorton Meadows, an area that looked like it would have good potential for butterflies and wildflowers if it wasn’t for the excessive number of off-lead dogs being allowed to roam everywhere, even into the one dragonfly pond. Fortunately, Portland’s Tout Quarry came up trumps again, and I saw two more Marbled whites there, including this obliging beauty.

Seeing this stunning Skylark up close was another of this trip’s special moments. I was walking back from Portland to Weymouth and had almost reached the information centre at Chesil Beach when I heard Skylark song in front of me. I searched the sky for a couple of minutes before realising that the bird was, in fact, sitting on a bush adjacent to the track directly ahead of me.

Such a singing spot seemed odd but I wondered if there might be a nest in the scrubby area I was walking through and so this male was trying to distract me from going near that. Though I had never intended to move off the path, its tactic certainly focused my attention, and I grabbed a few photos before walking onward.

Lifer: Lulworth skipper

16 Monday Jun 2025

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This was another new-to-me butterfly, the Lulworth skipper (Thymelicus acteon), and this was the butterfly that I really hoped to see during my visit to Weymouth. Clearly, I was not disappointed.

This was another find in the sculpture park that is Tout Quarry on the Isle of Portland, and I saw my first Lulworth skipper almost as soon as I arrived. At first glance, they could easily be mistaken for Small skippers, but Lulworths are slightly smaller and generally darker, often turning an olive-brown colour as they age. The females also have a series of golden marks that form a notable circle on their wings, though that didn’t help me. As is common amongst butterfly species, the males emerge first, and I saw no females.

However, by sheer good luck, I also spotted my first Small skipper of the year as I explored Tout Quarry, which proved a very good comparison for the Lulworths I was seeing. I’ve included a photo of the two species below; this is not precise as to their size relationship but does, hopefully, give some idea of their colour differences (Lulworth on the left, Small skipper on the right).

The Lulworth skipper is named after the Dorset town of Lulworth, where it was first found in 1832. Though these butterflies have expended their range a little in the intervening 190 years, they are still only found in locations along the south Dorset coast. I had expected to have to catch a bus to Lulworth until I read the butterflies could be found on Portland, and I booked my little break away as soon as I heard they were on the wing. So, it was a real treat to find them so quickly and easily, and then to spend perhaps 90 minutes in the quarry, enjoying all the butterfly species, the local plants, and, yes, I did also look at the stone sculptures.