Fri July 29th Going... Going... Gone...

I struggled to see a lone Purple Emperor at Knepp today, an OAP male -

The butterfly is effectively OVER, at Knepp and nationally. It has flown there for a record 44 days, and I saw it on 41.

At Knepp, it's had its second best year since effective monitoring began in 2014, but way behind the annus mirabilis that was 2018.  

Keep checking this Blog, which functions all year round to bring you news about Purple Doings. 

For example, we've found that the empty pupal cases flouresce under UV torchlight at night, and that these cases last for some time in the wild. As the evenings draw in I will be going out with my UV torch looking for pupal cases, as a survey technique, and perhaps to get some angle on population size.... Exciting times!

Thurs July 28th Season Ending...

Struggled to see two Purple Emperors at Knepp today, a very old male and a female in reasonable condition. 

A pair of battling old males was seen elsewhere, by other observers. 

So, 4 seen all told, only.  

This ageing male rockstar was behaving appallingly. He threw the hotel TV out of the window, got badly tanked up on oak sap, flew off upside down and molested an egging female - causing her to crash land on my ebike, who is now Blessed:-

The butterfly is all but over at Knepp. If you're thinking of visiting, you will see storks but you are highly unlikely to see any Emperors... Also, I will be taking the purple ribbonry and bunting down very soon, to effectively close the viewing season...

The fate of the 2023 Purple Emperor season at Knepp depends on the place getting a useful drop of rain within the next week. The sallows are dropping sub-canopy leaves. The ground below sallow stands looks like this -

OMG! Season Suddenly Ending...

I honestly thought that Emperors, and in particular Empresses, would easily last into early August at Knepp this year, perhaps to around the 7th. Consequently, Neil and I both took a couple of days off (the 25th and 26th).

Wrong, again, but that's Emperors for you...

This afternoon, in good weather conditions, Neil and I independently searched hard. He saw just two females, I managed one male and three possibly four females. 

Conclusion: the butterfly is going over fast, and I may have seen my last male of the year.

This is remarkable as there were still fresh-looking females around at the weekend, and some males in quite reasonable condition - but we don't know how long Emperors live.

I still need to see the butterfly on one more day to achieve my 40 Days & 40 Nights target...

Advice: unless you know exactly where and how to look, don't bother venturing out in search of Emperors and Empresses again this year, you're too late...

For the record, this has been the second best year for the butterfly at Knepp after 2018 (since monitoring began in 2014). They have behaved appallingly...

Crucially, we had a useful 6mm of rain at Knepp on Fri 22nd but need more if the sallows are not to wilt further. The fate of the 2023 Purple Emperor season depends on early August rain... ... ...

Keep reading this Blog, it functions all year round, not just during the flight season.  

Sun July 24th: sapping to the very end...

At Knepp, Purple Emperors are now becoming very localised and episodic, more and more restricted to the vicinity of veteran oaks that produce sap bleeds - but those bleeds switch on and off from day to day, and their utilisation is dictated by wind speed and direction.

Males are now scarce, though there are still some fresh-looking ones around.

Females are still relatively plentiful and in remarkably good condition, though they're less active than the males and less predictable.  

The oak tree that produced a cluster of four sapping females yesterday only held a lone female this morning, and none during the afternoon - perhaps because of a change in wind speed and direction. Here she is -

I'm having a couple of days off from Emperoring, before returning to Knepp for the Grand Conclusion and to work my other nemesis, the Brown Hairstreak...

Sat July 23rd Emperor Season Without End!

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.

Fri July 22nd

I was doing talks and walks in East Sussex and Surrey yesterday, but managed to spend five minutes with a pristine female at Knepp at 5pm, before she went off sapping high in a veteran oak. 

I have now seen Emperors in the wild for 36 days and am officially doing the 40 Days and 40 Nights Challenge... (someone has to).

Generally, the season is winding down, but with a long tail. This weekend is Last Chance to See weekend, afternoons and evenings only, Go for it...   

Thurs July 21st: Bad Light Stops Play...

At last a day without wind! However, a pall of cloud developed over Knepp (and much of the rest of the southern Empire) just after 1pm, when I started the weekly PE transect... By 1.30 the males were quiescent and from 2pm only sapping females were seen, so I abandoned the count. At 4pm bad light stopped play for the day.

Here's one male I've become very fond of, called 'His Vain Gloriousity', basking in the gloom. He's an old boy and can't go on forever, though we'd all like him to - 

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think any aberrations have been recorded this year... I thought there would be quite a few of the lugenda-type vars this year, stimulated by cold nights at the end of May and beginning of June (associated with the Jubilee weather)...