Monday, June 21, 2010
BUTTERCUPS and butterflies – two Speckled Wood butterflies waltz around one another in spirals in the morning sunlight under the beeches across the stream as I step out into the yard.
Beyond them is a field of buttercups, golden as The Field of The Cloth of Gold. In 1520, the kings of England and France met to parley but attempted to outshine one another with tents and costumes woven from threads of silk and gold. It ended when Henry VIII challenged Francis I to a wrestling match and lost.
When I came back from a walk across the buttercup meadow, the seams on my boots were golden with pollen, and my trouser legs were wet with cuckoo spits where I had brushed against thistles and docks. Every thistle seemed to bear a cuckoo spit: it is a great year for frog-hoppers, the nymphs of an insect like a cicada, the grass-hopper creatures we hear singing incessantly at night on Mediterranean shores.
Frog-hoppers are attractive little things, half the body green, the other half yellow, with rudimentary legs and eyes. Because the nymph hasn’t yet gained an exoskeleton, or harder outer skin, it is protected by the ‘spit’ it exudes, which not only hides it but has a foul taste – it was one of the ingredients the witches in Macbeth used in their infernal brew.
The spits are so called because the cuckoo was once, apparently, thought to expectorate on certain plants, while the frog hoppers earn their name because they vaguely resemble frogs and, more pertinently, they hop. If you choose to examine one, please replace it in the spit from whence it came. Fruit growers might be tempted to do otherwise: they can be a pest, feeding on sap sucked from stems and leaves.
Butterflies are abroad in numbers, flitting over the briars in bud. Speckled Wood are most common, along with Large and Small Whites and the occasional Red Admiral. The thistles now bearing cuckoo spits were last year swarming with the caterpillars of the Painted Lady butterflies that had set off from the northern fringes of the Sahara, crossed the Atlas Mountains and arrived here in, literally, tens – if not hundreds – of thousands, on the June Bank Holiday weekend. This year, not a Painted Lady to be seen in these parts so far. Or maybe the butterfly I saw dashing high over the buttercups this morning was a Painted Lady. It was too far away to tell.
This week, the data gathered by the Irish Butterfly Monitoring Scheme in which I participated last year arrived in the post. The graphs, pie charts and bar charts make fascinating viewing for anybody interested in the various species counted and categorised at 70 Irish sites between the first week in April and the last in September 2009.
Most common was the Speckled Wood, followed by the Green-veined White, Meadow Brown, Painted Lady (in 2009), Large White, Ringlet, Small Tortoiseshell, Red Admiral, Orange Tip and Peacock. Nineteen other species are also present.
Volunteers counted the butterflies they saw on a once-weekly walk at sites in all counties except Limerick, Clare (a pity: Burren butterflies would have been interesting), Meath and Offaly but this year the scheme has registered more volunteers than ever before. The organisers are taking names for next year and can be contacted at The National Biodiversity Centre in Waterford, tel 051 306240, or via the website at www.biodoiversityireland.ie
It is a satisfying business, keeping one’s eyes open for butterflies, and it adds interest to a walk, while not demanding more than a weekly round of a mile or so.
Our garden is like a jungle and I was amazed to see that a sprig of whortleberry bush, which I had stuck in a flower pot, is growing small, purple berries. I had hoped it would root, become a bush and be productive in a year or two. But already it is producing. The berries won’t be big, I think, but the enterprise is showing early signs of success. My wife used to collect whortleberries, which they call ‘hurts’ in west Cork, on her way to and from school. They’re delicious, and grow plentifully on ditches.
On the wall by our stream, St Patrick’s Cabbage, one of our unique Lusitanian flora, is in bloom, the tiny, flowers a haze of pink in contrast to the dense red and purple of the fuchsia nearby.
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