Early Autumn Larvae: Not Good News...

My first post for a while... (I've been hors de combat). 

Incredibly, it seems that I topped and tailed the 2024 flight season: I know of no adult records subsequent to mine on Aug 11th, nationally...  

It looks as though larvae are in low or very low numbers this early autumn, though I'm only just getting into the swing of looking for them. I've had a big session in Savernake, and have looked in Cirencester Park Woods and at Lambourn (the latter two sites only support very small populations).  

Bad news: None so far at Cirencester and Lambourn, and a big session yesterday in Savernake (3 searchers, totalling 14 hours of actual foliage searching) produced only one mid-2nd instar larva and a 1st instar fail + egg case base. Here's the one we found, showing distinctive feeding marks on a classic midgreen soft matt leaf - 

One major breeding area in Sav drew a total blank, suggesting that Herself hadn't wandered there. 

The main problem at all three of my study sites is finding suitable foliage: sallows in exposed or open situations are heavily infested by Melampsora Willow Rust, and / or are too thick-leaved (because the sallows came into leaf ridiculously early), and many overhung sallows are heavily coated in Sallow Mildew (which proliferates in wet autumns). 

Sallow foliage quality is, fortunately, quite high in shady situations. So there is Hope... 

Here's a Tree Damsel Bug Himacerus apterus, found on sallow in Sav yesterday. This is a serial killer of caterpillars and persona non grata on sallows (I translocated it onto a birch tree, and told it to Go and Sin No More)... 

   

Sun Aug 11th: Last Post in Savernake

Checked the best territories in south Savernake today. Just this one male, in reasonable condition, in the Dead Beech Glade for 40 mins either side of 3 O'clock. Then, realising he was all alone at the party, with not even a bumblebee to chase, he drifted off and away... 

Sat Aug 10th -Still Flying in Glos!!!

The most worn and faded Emperor I've ever seen was smashing things up this afternoon at Sapperton, W of Cirencester, Glos - a faded pinky-yellow in colour, rather like a very worn migrant Painted Lady. The wind prevented me from photographing him.  At one point he eviscerated a high-flying Large White.   

Aug 8th - female in Norfolk & another Derbys Sighting

 Drizzle leading to heavy rain in Glos today, which could end the PE season there - we'll find out tomorrow...

Meanwhile, a female was photoed near Cromer in Norfolk today, and a second Derbyshire sighting has come to light - a female feeding on a trackway on July 18th near Aston on Trent, SE of Derby.

Wed Aug 7th: Apatura iris versus a bat...

Today is my birthday, and also that of Emma Grundy in Radio 4's The Archers. I am seven. I set off somewhat speculatively for Savernake in indifferent weather, but arrived there in sunshine and managed to see two Emperors smashing things up before the sun went, and Stygian gloom descended, and deepened.

It got so dull that at 3pm a bat started batting about, a Noctule I think, high up in the best of the known Savernake territories, the Dead Beech Glade. Of course, a hidden Emperor went for it - I had no idea that there was a male there.

I don't know of any other records of Apatura iris pursuing a bat, but all things are possible with this the best of all possible butterflies...

This may well be an excellent way for the 2024 season to finish, though I suspect there's a few days left at Savernake. 

Emperors have the habit of doing something particularly ridiculous at precisely 3pm (at Knepp you can set your clock by it). This habit has given rise to the term, 'the 3 O'clock Emperor'...  

 

50 up!

Purple Emperor still on the wing today at Sapperton in Gloucestershire. That means He's been on the wing in England now for 50 days this year, and I've got to work out when and if He's ever clocked up the 50 before... 

Here He is, atop a wobbly Ash tree - 

Sixty Years On...

The Purple Emperor came into my life sixty years ago, at a beastly prep school in W Sussex where boys were beastly to each other. 

Butterfly and moth collecting was an official school hobby, led by an petrifying Maths master called Jonah. 

Emperors were rumoured to be in the landscape, but we weren't allowed out into it, on pain of death, so the Emperor was but a dream. 

We left the bathroom lights on all night, and propped the windows open, turning it into a walk-in moth trap. At 7am there was a scramble to bag the night's catch. Hawk moths, in particular, could be traded for what we craved for most - sweets. Peach Blossom was the commonest moth.

There I read BB's (Denys Watkins-Pitchford) paean to the Edwardian rural idyll Brendon Chase, in June 1964. 

It tells of the adventures of three boys who can't face going back to boreding skool (syn boarding school) at the end of the Easter hols, and run away to the forest, to live off the land for a summer and autumn. They have the most wonderful Gaian adventures.

Watkins-Pitchford was the original Emperorophile, and the Emperor flits in and out of the tale, as a dream which suddenly becomes real - when this happens to one of the boys - 

'And then ... he saw it, quite suddenly he saw it, the glorious regal insect of his dreams!'

'It was flying towards him down the ride and it settled for a moment on a leaf. Then, as he advanced, trembling with excitement, it soared heavenwards to the top of an oak. There he watched it, flitting round one of the topmost sprays far out of reach, mocking him, the Unattainable, the Jewel, the King of butterflies!'

That paragraph, and its build-up and continuum, was life changing for 9-year old me...

Buy the book and read the rest yourself. It's a story that couldn't be written, let alone published today. Interestingly, Watkins-Pitchford wrote it before he'd seen his first Emperor, when the butterfly was still a dream.

Armed with a pink shrimping net and a copy of The Observers Book of British Butterflies (+ the Larger Moths), I spent late July and August 1964 scouring south-west Somerset for the Purple Emperor, turning up Marbled White, Comma and Clouded Yellow instead. A Hard Days Night was top of the pops, and the sun shone. 

Coming soon, a tribute to Notes & View of the Purple Emperor, published 60 years ago...