The Purple Emperor has now been on the wing at Knepp for 38 days.
Today I walked the PE transect there, for Week 6. This is normally the last week of Knepp's PE season, though in 2018 the butterfly only lasted five weeks here, due to drought.
Normally, in Week 6 I struggle to count more than 4-5: today I totalled 16. This butterfly is going to make it into Week 7 at Knepp, and into early August! Note that I predicted a protracted emergence on this blog back in early June, for once I was actually right...
Better still, my count included a freshly emerged female being courted by a male my age - she was receptive and led him up into the oak tops for wedding and bedding. She must have been a caterpillar into July, presumably on a late-to-come-into-leaf sallow.
However, the bulk of the males at Knepp have finished, and some of the females, and the butterfly is now very local and only active intermittently during afternoons and early evenings. Some of the best territories are unoccupied, not least because of that blithering wind which has plagued this season.
Females are busy feeding on oak sap. Neil found a sap run holding four sapping girls, though there were only two present by the time I got there -
Having done a vigorous Risk Assessment, Neil got up close for some close-up photography -
That's the good news. The bad news is that despite 3mm of rain here yesterday many of the sallow stands are showing signs of drought, dropping their sub-canopy leaves as they did in 2018 -
No rain is forecast for the region during the coming week.
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