Time was when the Purple Emperor season would normally start on or around July 7th. This year, the butterfly is now past peak and probably starting to go over at early sites in the south east. The length of the tail will be determined by the intensity of the current heatwave.
The woodland vegetation provides a better indication of real time than our calendar. Look at the oaks, and the sallows, and everything else. It's late July out there...
It appears that 2026 is at best a rather modest year for the Purple Enperor, numbers-wise - but populations have been hard to monitor due to extreme heat and unforecast winds, generating a pattern of days of relative activity punctuated by days of extreme lethargy.
Yesterday, I visited the central Malverns, straddling the Herefordshire - Worcestershire border, where Emperor males were discovered genuinely hilltopping last year, and were seen again last Wed and Thurs.
These are the first records I know of Emperors hilltopping in open terrain in this country, though odd individuals have been seen on the crest of the South Downs (seemingly wandering over, rather than setting up and defending territory).
It was too windy yesterday, with a Fresh westerly blowing on the Malvern tops. We saw a nice scatter of old sallows with suitable-looking foliage on the western (Herefords) slopes. Here's the habitat, where males have been perching on bracken tops -
Elsewhere, Emperors have been seen in three sites in Yorkshire (but none in Lancashire), some new places in Derbyshire, and has been rediscovered in Devon.
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