Tag Archives: Dorset butterflies

NFY: Marbled white

20 Monday Jul 2026

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Amazingly, I didn’t see my first Marbled white (Melanargia galathea) of the year during my recent week on the south coast of Dorset, nor during any other recent jaunts away from home. Though this butterfly species is not resident locally, my first sighting this year was on 29 June just a couple of miles from home at Lavernock Nature Reserve. Even more surprisingly, I didn’t see just one, but rather two of these stunning butterflies, and a couple of local chaps I talked to had seen six (!) the previous day. As we had just experienced our second heatwave of the year, from the 22nd to the 25th of June, it’s likely that these butterflies had been blown across the Bristol Channel from England on the hot nor’easterly winds we experienced during those few days.

I love these stunningly patterned butterflies so I was very pleased to have timed my latest visit to Weymouth and the Isle of Portland with their peak flying time of mid June to mid July. Despite my visit also coinciding with our third heatwave of the year (I’d booked my travel several months earlier), by leaving my guesthouse before 7am, I still managed to spend many hours over several days wandering around the disused quarries on Portland, thrilled to be surrounded by these, and many other, butterfly species.

In his Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies, Peter Eeles explains that the aposematic colouring of this black-and-white butterfly is thought to deter potential predators, the flavonoids from the food ingested by its larva making both larva and adult taste bad. Eeles also notes that these flavonoids ‘make the butterfly more visible to potential to potential mates thanks to the ultra-violet reflection from the flavonoid-rich white areas that contrast with the blacks on the wings’. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see what the butterflies see?

If you’re wondering why the Marbled whites in some of my photos have a brown hue that’s because the female of the species, though still having the black-and-white marbling on her upper wings, exhibits a pale brown tint on the undersides and on the leading edge of her forewings.

NFY: Adonis blue

23 Saturday May 2026

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As the Adonis blue (Polyommatus bellargus) uses Horseshoe vetch (Hippocrepis comosa) as its larval food plant, it can only be found where that species of vetch grows, which in turn means the majority of this butterfly’s colonies are restricted to certain locations in southern England, specifically ‘in the core areas of chalk downland in Dorset, Wiltshire, Sussex and the Isle of Wight’, according to Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies. (Horseshoe vetch will feature in tomorrow’s blog post.)

The restriction imposed by its larval plant means I never see this butterfly in Wales, and so, last week, on the Isle of Portland, was only the fourth time I’d seen the stunning cobalt blue upper wings of the male Adonis blue.

And, as this was the very start of their 2026 season – there are two generations of adults each year, the first fly in May-June, the second in August-September – I only saw three individuals, all males. The females emerge a little later than the males, so, due to poor timing on my part, I’ve only once seen a female Adonis blue, back in August 2019, during a visit to the Malling Down Reserve in East Sussex. Though I already have another trip to Weymouth and Portland booked, that will be in July, so I will once again miss seeing any females. I intend trying to remedy that omission next year, as I would very much like to be present when more of these little stunners are in flight, both male and female.

Surprise Small blues

20 Wednesday May 2026

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I had only ever seen a Small blue butterfly (Cupido minimus) twice before my recent trip to Weymouth, the first time back in the summer of 2018 during a visit to a friend in East Sussex (see Small and blue, 27 July 2018) and the second time in 2019, during a bird club trip to Salisbury Plain (Birding on Salisbury Plain, 13 May 2019). And I hadn’t expected to see them on this recent trip but Nature played a blinder!

I was over the moon to see Small blues three days in a row, all on the Isle of Portland but all in locations where I never expected to find them. The first was on Friday 8 May in King Barrow Quarry, where I was amazed to spot three in one small area, a little colony.

The second was the following day, Saturday the 9th, in Tout Quarry, this time a single butterfly that just appeared on the path below me as if by magic.

And the third, on Sunday 10th, once again appeared as if conjured up out of thin air, this time on the grass below the National Coastwatch building near the coastal path that runs along Portland’s west cliffs.

The one time I actually went looking for Small blues, and spent two hours walking almost every small path through the Broadcroft Butterfly Reserve, where these butterflies are supposed to live, I saw none. Which only made me even more grateful to have experienced the previous three totally unexpected sightings.

NFY: Wall

18 Monday May 2026

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My decision to head to Weymouth and Portland for a week from the 7th to the 14th of May was a last minute one; I had booked somewhere else but the weather there was forecast to be mostly wet so I cancelled that and headed south to Dorset instead. I hadn’t checked which butterfly species I might see there; I just knew that if it rained in Weymouth, I could always go birding.

When the Dorset weather turned out mostly dry, if not always particularly sunny, I knew I had to head to the locations on the Isle of Portland where I’ve previously found butterflies, and one of the first I saw there was the Wall (Lasiommata megera). Checking now, I see that the first generation adults usually emerge in late April – early May, so my timing was perfect.

Most of the Walls I spotted, in Tout and King Barrow quarries, at the Broadcroft Butterfly Reserve, and along the coastal path above the west cliffs, were constantly active, the majority males flying back and forth in search of females but, occasionally, one would pause long enough and close enough for me to get a few photos. These are they.

A proliferation of Peacocks

01 Wednesday Apr 2026

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Let’s have a break from all the bird blogs (there are more insects coming next week, I promise).

Just as Friday 20 March was The day of the Wheatears, so Wednesday 18 March – a bright sunny day – was the day of the Peacocks.

A strong cool easterly was blowing across Weymouth and Portland that day but, in sheltered areas, the sun was warm and temperatures rose to the mid teens (Celsius), encouraging insects to emerge.

These were my first Peacocks of 2026, and there were a lot of them: two flitted up from the flowering Blackthorn trees as I walked a circuit of RSPB Lodmoor; four were found basking on the rocks in King Barrow Quarry and another three in the more exposed Tout Quarry; and I found five along the paths of RSPB Radipole late afternoon. I was in butterfly heaven!

Adonis blues

11 Monday Aug 2025

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In classical antiquity, Adonis was celebrated as the epitome of male beauty. I presume, when writing in his publication British Butterflies in 1860, W. S. Coleman named this striking butterfly the Adonis blue, he considered it was the epitome of male beauty in the world of British butterflies. Though lacking the elaborate patterning of many British butterflies, the sheer brilliance of the colour of the male Adonis blue (Polyommatus bellargus) is breathtaking.

Fortunately for me, this butterfly has two broods each year so, though I missed the first in May-June, I timed my visit to Weymouth perfectly for the very start of the emergence of the second brood in August-September. I only managed to see two males, no females (which have chocolate brown upper wings, tinged with varying amounts of blue) but, as these sightings were only the third time I’d seen any Adonis blues, I was very happy indeed!

Wall butterfly

06 Wednesday Aug 2025

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Wall seems such a bland name for this stunning butterfly, though the name does describe where it’s often to be found, sitting on a stone wall – or just a large boulder, soaking in the sunshine.

The UK Butterflies website gives a list of all the different names our butterflies have been given over the years; the Wall started out as the ‘Golden Marbled Butterfly, with Black Eyes’ – a bit of a mouthful but wonderfully descriptive, has been the ‘Great Argus’ and the ‘Orange Argus’, and also ‘Wall Brown’, a name many people still use.

I found my first Walls in six years in the quarries on the Isle of Portland last week, at Broadcroft Quarry Butterfly Reserve (which was actually quite a disappointing location as it is very overgrown and so not the ideal habitat for most butterflies), at King Barrow and Tout Quarries (both excellent).

Though it was once found at sites throughout Britain, the Wall has suffered a severe decline in population in recent decades, and is now restricted mostly to coastal locations. In Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies, author Peter Eeles explains that this seems to be due to the changing climate. The warmer summer and autumn temperatures can encourage the butterfly to attempt to breed a third generation, which subsequently fails to mature before the weather turns colder.

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.

Lifer: Silver-studded blue

14 Saturday Jun 2025

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I’ve just returned from four wonderful nights in Weymouth, on England’s south coast, my days full of walking and wildlife. I may see a lot of wildlife where I live but part of the reason for my recent house move was so that I could afford to have a few short breaks away to explore new areas and see different wildlife while I still have the energy and mobility to do that, and also while being as low-carbon as possible in the process, of course, so travelling by train and/or bus and with a lot of walking as well. So, there will be a few blogs in the next week or so, covering some of the things I saw while away.

First up, in an old disused quarry on the Isle of Portland, were my first ever Silver-studded blue butterflies (Plebejus argus). The ‘silver-studded’ part of the name comes from the way the light is reflected off the light blue scales on the underside of the adults’ hindwings, making them shimmer like silver. And the ‘argus‘ epithet in its scientific name is a nod to the multi-eyed shepherd of Greek mythology, a reference to the spots on the undersides of the wings.

Silver-studded blues are rare and only seen in a few isolated areas around the southern coast of England, in Pembrokeshire and around the Great Orme in Wales, and in a couple of coastal locations in Norfolk and Suffolk. From those locations, you can perhaps guess that they prefer heathland, sand-dune systems and limestone grassland, in particular sheltered sunny spots where their companions, the black Lasius ant species, thrive. As is seen in several butterfly species, ants provide the butterflies with protection from insect predators throughout their life cycle.

Tout quarry provides the perfect environment for the Silver-studded blues. Quarrying has hollowed out large areas of ground, making it a sun trap and leaving stony areas where specialist wildflower species have managed to seed and flourish, though the vegetation does have to be managed to ensure the more aggressive plant species don’t overwhelm large areas of ground.

I was extremely lucky with the timing of my trip as these butterflies had only just emerged in the few days prior to my arrival, and that’s why I only saw the vibrant blue male butterflies; the females are brown on both the upper- and undersides of their wings. To see them is the perfect incentive for a return trip!