Tag Archives: Wall

Late Dorset butterflies

04 Sunday Oct 2026

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Only eight species of butterfly were seen in Weymouth and on the Isle of Portland last week, as it’s now late in the year for most butterfly species, and the season for many is already over.

A lovely surprise was this rather faded Wall fluttering along a path at RSPB Lodmoor, likely the same specimen seen two days running. I did spend a morning walking around the disused quarries on Portland, and was told by a chap surveying a transect at Tout Quarry that he’d seen a couple of Wall that morning but I didn’t spot any as I subsequently wandered around the quarry.

Two Small heath in the neighbouring King Barrow Quarry were an unexpected surprise. The Dorset Butterflies website says there are ‘Two broods, the first starting in May and peaking in June, going through into July, and the second emerging in August and going through to September in smaller numbers’, so I was lucky to see these so late in September.

Not surprisingly given what an amazing influx we have seen this year, there were Clouded yellows everywhere, and I couldn’t resist taking even more photographs of these golden beauties. I’m going to have to be ruthless when I go through this year’s photos deleting those I don’t want to keep.

Otherwise, I found the odd Painted lady, quite a lot of Red admirals getting ready to depart on their return migration south to Europe’s warmer wintering grounds, a few late Common blues, some Small whites, and a number of Speckled woods. And I enjoyed seeing each and every one of them, knowing they will soon all be gone for the year.

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.

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.

236/365 Of the Wall

24 Saturday Aug 2019

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The Wall butterfly (Lasiommata megera) used to be named Wall brown (and you do still hear some people call it that), one of the trio of browns along with the Meadow brown and what was the Hedge brown but has also been renamed, the Gatekeeper. Unfortunately, the Wall is not faring as well as its brown friends – though they are both thriving and plentiful, the Wall is seen much less frequently and in more limited locations than it used to be.

190824 Wall butterfly (1)

This Wall is only the fourth I’ve ever seen so I was delighted to spot it last week during a meander through the wildflower meadows at Arlington Reservoir and Nature Reserve in East Sussex.

190824 Wall butterfly (2)