WHEN the sun shines, a speckled wood butterfly energetically patrols the pathway underneath our balcony. It is not a colourful or showy species but, given the almost total absence of butterflies this year, it is a joy to behold.
Usually speckled woods are found in sunny glades which they defend robustly and where they do their courting. Once, the species was called the wood argus after the multi-eyed Greek hero because of the many white spots or ‘eyes’ on its velvet-brown wings.
This speckling provides perfect camouflage in the world of light and shade where sunlight filters through the canopy and scatters over the brambles and honeysuckle. It feeds on honeydew, the sugary substance deposited by aphids. No wonder forest butterflies have an aura of the magical. They seem as diaphonous as the sunlight itself.
However, butterflies of all kinds, like sunny days, have been scarce this year. Speckled woods are perhaps fortunate because they can fly in woodland corridors with foliage overhead to protect them from the rain and nutrition which isn’t dependant on flowers.
In rain and wind, butterflies must shelter. Our more colourful varieties, the Aristocrat butterflies (painted lady, red admiral, tortoiseshell, peacock, etc.,) cannot visit the flowers which are their food source. They hide under leaves, and often remain inactive for days or, indeed, terminally. Cloudy weather delays the flowering of plants. The nectar, sweet liquid which they suck up through a tubular tongue or proboscis, simply isn’t there.
This year, there were almost no tortoiseshells. I saw a few flying in April, when they emerged from hibernation — and I found the usual corpses, dried out but still in gorgeous colour, behind a cupboard or a curtain where they had overwintered but hadn’t survived. The buddleia in the garden flowered and died, barely visited. On one rare morning of sunshine, I went to look at it and saw only one tortoishell, a peacock and three silver-washed fritillaries on the fat, purple flower heads. Usually, there would be dozens of their kin. I saw three tortoiseshells flying in September and just a couple of red admirals. A bad year indeed.
Last week, the heading on an article in an English newspaper read Migration revives butterfly stocks. Southern and eastern England had enjoyed a sudden influx of small tortoiseshells from mainland Europe, along with red admirals and large whites. We didn’t see them in west Cork, or not along the backroads and paths where I walk regularly.
In 2006, I saw red admirals on October 24, again on November 27, and on December 3, the latter a solitary individual. Fucshia in bloom and red admirals feeding on it are synonymous with autumn here in the deep south, as indeed are red admirals feeding on windfall apples, for they also enjoy the juice exuded by bruised fruit.
It is surprising that ‘delicate’ creatures such as butterflies and moths can fly thousands of miles. In fact, many of our familiar butterflies and moths migrate. Painted lady, red admiral and clouded yellow butterflies, humming-bird hawk-moths and silver-Y moths recolonise the British and Irish Isles every spring, arriving from southern Europe and North Africa. They raise a generation which returns south, or dies at winter’s approach. Red admirals are now surviving in increasing numbers. This would account for my December sighting in 2006.
We also noticed the absence of moths this summer. Surrounded by trees, thickets and land that hasn’t been farmed or fertilised for half a century, our house is usually visited by many species, attracted to the lights at night. They fly in an open window and circle the lamps, casting shadows on the walls. This year, no moths.
A reader sent me a photo of an elephant hawk-moth caterpillar, which he first took for an enormous slug. Up to three inches long, they retract the head into the front of body when threatened. This then swells and resembles an elephant’s head, with large false eyes. The moth into which they eventually transform is very beautiful, pink in colour with ‘triangular’ double wings.
Let us hope the butterflies and moths recover. They are important pollinators of the plants that feed us and their beauty enhances the summer nights and days.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, October 06, 2008
