June 25th: From The Malverns to the Broads...

The 2025 Purple Emperor season just gets better...

Males have now been found hill-topping in the central Malverns, slap bang on the Herefords/Worcs border. There are no modern records from Herefordshire, but it should be nicely Purple. 

This is on the arid summit of the Malverns ridge, above the wooded lower slopes (where sallows grow). Males have been seen perching on bracken fronds and low saplings, and sparring from those perching positions.

They're known to behave like this in hilly and mountainous regions abroad, and there's a hilltop in Leicestershire where males have been seen setting up territories in similar situations, but this is out of our box... 

The hilltop in question is one of the arid ones to the right of centre in the middle distance (photo taken this May from Midsummer Hill) -

And if that's not barking mad enough, a male has been photoed hitching a lift on a wherry (old sailing barge) on the River Yare just east of Norwich, upstream of Strumpshaw Fen in The Broads.  

Other News:-

* A pristine female ab. lutescens (we think), was photoed today in Heart of England Forest, SW Warwicks - white bands and spots replaced by a brightish yellow. 

* 23 males and a female seen in Straits Inclosure of Alice Holt Forest this morning, including a chase of four. I'm fairly certain that that's the best tally from The Straits since 2010 (most of the main ride sallows got felled early in 2011). 

* Numbers at Knepp are now so great that it looks as though this year is going to eclipse 2018 there (read Chapter 15 of His Imperial Majesty, and salivate). Today, Neil Hulme counted 71 on the PE transect there, beating the previous record transect counts of 66 and 60 in 2018.

* Advise. Visit Knepp this weekend, at all cost (scroll back on this Blog for visiting details, it's in white font).

* Remember, our Vision is for this butterfly to become so common that Radio 5live's Traffic News announces one late June afternoon that, "the M25 in Surrey is closed in both directions due to swarms of ...giggle ... Purple ... giggle ... Emperor ... giggle ... butterflies!"  That's what Ambition looks like...