Lulworth Skipper?

[Brian Arnold]

This Skipper was in my garden at Harman's Cross near Swanage today. I think it is male Lulworth, however I have never seen one in our garden before, just lots of Small Skipper. Although we have a very small patch of Tor Grass in our garden this was some way from it and nectaring on Fleabane. Opinions please? It has a faint crescent shape and was smaller and darker than Small Skipper. If confirmed then this brings our butterfly species total for our garden this year to 28.

[bugboy]

Congratulations on getting 28 Species in your garden this year. It is indeed a male Lulworth. With that scent brand the only other species it might have been was a Small Skipper but its far too dark and you can see the faint diagnostic markings making it beyond doubt, a Lulworth.

[Brian Arnold]

Bugboy, Thank you for your opinion. I was reasonably sure it is a Lulworth, and we do see lots of them along the coast from Durlston to Weymouth, but was not expecting to get one in our garden, so it leaves that feeling of a nagging doubt. Nice to have a 2nd opinion. I also posted it on Twitter and Martin Warren who lives near me agrees a definate Lulworth. I need one more species in our garden this year to break our record for a single year, but I think that is now unlikely - however you never know what might appear in the garden next. Our total butterfly species count in our garden since we moved here in 1984 is now 32 species of butterfly.

[bugboy]

Never say never, there's been a fair few swallowtail drifting over from the continent in recent weeks, and I noticed plenty of Wild Carrot down your way when I was there a couple of weeks ago to encourage any wandering females to hang around. The Long-tailed Blue are due any week now if past invasions are anything to go by... have you any Everlasting Pea in your garden?

[Brian Arnold]

We saw 5 Swallowtails a few years ago at St Aldhelm's Head near Swanage. I have photos of them on the Wild Carrot.
And yes we have planted Everlasting Pea in our garden, and the Brimstones love it, but alas no Long-tailed Blues, however one was seen at Durlston a year or so ago but not by me. I have been to Sussex a couple of times and seen the LTB there.
I do one of the transects at Durlston and 2 years ago I found a Large Tortoiseshell on the transect route - it remained there for about 4 days, and we got loads of great photos.

[Pete Eeles]

Great find, Brian - and good to see that you're still as enthusiastic as ever! It's been a while since we last met, but I look forward to hearing more!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Brian Arnold]

Pete,

Appologies for taking so long to reply - we have been overwhelmed with grandchildren and summer visitors.

I started my interest in butterflies when I was about 12 years old - that is nearly 60 years ago. Me and 3 other school friends used to cycle from Bournemouth to look for butterflies in the New Forest and in the Isle of Purbeck where we now live. In those days we collected them, and I have 2 Pale Clouded Yellows that I caught on Ballard Down. These days just photography of course. Out of the 4 of us there are now 3 of us that still meet up regularly to search for butterflies.

My interest comes from my parents who were great walkers and lovers of nature. My mum was president of the Bournemouth Natural Science Society for a year and she knew Jane Goodall, Margaret Brooks, and Gerald Durrel's sister. She had arranged for Gerald Durrel to do a talk at the society but he died just before he was due to do the talk. My mum was also a founder member of the New Forest Badger Group.

I think the last time I met you was at the Carter Community School in Poole where you gave a talk, but maybe also elsewhere. I spoke to you before we went to Scotland a few years ago to see Chequered Skipper and we had a perfect week with lots of sightings. We have been all over the UK to see and photograph every British species, except I have not been to Ireland for the Criptic Wood White - hopefully one day.

I do the Durlston East transect at Swanage, but this year looks to be heading for a very low count. We usually have the highest count of any transect in Dorset, but this year I assume the very dry weather is having a major effect on numbers. Will have to wait and see what the other Dorset transects get this year.

Our garden is great for butterflies, it borders oak woodland which we own, and so we get a really good selection of butterflies. Since moving to Harman's Cross near Swanage in 1984 we have counted 32 species in the garden. A few are just occassional visitors - just flying through - eg we have seen 3 Clouded Yellows in the last couple of weeks, and get occassional Graylings and Purple Hairstreaks.

Our most interesting find locally was getting a Large Tortoiseshell on the Durlston East transect in 2020. It hung around for several days so I got some great photos.

Best Wishes, Brian Arnold

[zigzag_wanderer]

Pete,

Appologies for taking so long to reply - we have been overwhelmed with grandchildren and summer visitors.

I started my interest in butterflies when I was about 12 years old - that is nearly 60 years ago. Me and 3 other school friends used to cycle from Bournemouth to look for butterflies in the New Forest and in the Isle of Purbeck where we now live. In those days we collected them, and I have 2 Pale Clouded Yellows that I caught on Ballard Down. These days just photography of course. Out of the 4 of us there are now 3 of us that still meet up regularly to search for butterflies.

My interest comes from my parents who were great walkers and lovers of nature. My mum was president of the Bournemouth Natural Science Society for a year and she knew Jane Goodall, Margaret Brooks, and Gerald Durrel's sister. She had arranged for Gerald Durrel to do a talk at the society but he died just before he was due to do the talk. My mum was also a founder member of the New Forest Badger Group.

I think the last time I met you was at the Carter Community School in Poole where you gave a talk, but maybe also elsewhere. I spoke to you before we went to Scotland a few years ago to see Chequered Skipper and we had a perfect week with lots of sightings. We have been all over the UK to see and photograph every British species, except I have not been to Ireland for the Criptic Wood White - hopefully one day.

I do the Durlston East transect at Swanage, but this year looks to be heading for a very low count. We usually have the highest count of any transect in Dorset, but this year I assume the very dry weather is having a major effect on numbers. Will have to wait and see what the other Dorset transects get this year.

Our garden is great for butterflies, it borders oak woodland which we own, and so we get a really good selection of butterflies. Since moving to Harman's Cross near Swanage in 1984 we have counted 32 species in the garden. A few are just occassional visitors - just flying through - eg we have seen 3 Clouded Yellows in the last couple of weeks, and get occassional Graylings and Purple Hairstreaks.

Our most interesting find locally was getting a Large Tortoiseshell on the Durlston East transect in 2020. It hung around for several days so I got some great photos.

Best Wishes, Brian Arnold

Fascinating stuff Brian.

I hope you don't mind me being cheeky and asking a few questions.

- Do you still have your collection from the days when you caught them ?

- In your school days was there any mechanism for sharing what you were seeing/capturing, including "showing off" any rarities ? You would obviously be able to show your parents, who would have been pleased as punch that they'd passed on their natural history interests to you. But were there other groups of local school children who were into butterflies who you would discuss findings with and/or compete against, or local societies that you would share your findings/collections with ? Or was it purely for the joy of getting out there with your three best pals and seeing what you could find ? It's incredibly heart-warming that three of you still get out there regularly looking for butterflies.

- Was it mainly butterflies or were you say, keen birdwatchers too ?

- 32 species in a garden is pretty special. If you included the surrounding woodland which you own, would that take the sightings tally up at all ?

I'm 58 by the way, so not that much younger than you, but as I only caught the butterfly bug relatively recently, I'm fascinated by people like yourself and Jack (and many others on here I'm sure) who've kept their love of butterflies undimmed for such a long time.

[Brian Arnold]

I only have 1 case of the butterflies that I collected all those years ago, the rest got infected with bugs and the specimens disintergrated. Many of the butterflies have faded unfortunately, but the Pale Clouded Yellows are still ok.

There was no mechanism in my school days for sharing our findings - the 4 of us just enjoyed getting out on our bicycles and looking for butterflies. There were no other boys doing the same as us - they were all into football etc.

We collected just butterflies - I did have a friend who was keen on birds, but he died many years ago.

The 32 species includes those in the woods - actually there are none that we get just in the woods that we don't see in the main part of the garden or on the edge of the woods. There is a steam railway at the bottom of our garden, so some of the species also appear there, and just a short distance the other side of the railway we occassionally see White-letter Hairstreaks, and we have planted elms in our garden hoping to attract them, but none seen so far in the garden.

[zigzag_wanderer]

Many thanks for taking time out to answer my questions Brian.

I had wondered (hoped in fact) if butterfly collecting was quite a big thing among school children in your butterfly-favourable location, but I guess football (of whatever code), cricket,fishing etc have always had a very big pull on schoolboys down the years.

Pity about the infestation on your collection but great that you still have some intact. I can imagine a lot of time and effort was involved in preparing/displaying the specimens. I was born in Dar Es Salaam and the family moved back to Blighty in late '68 (when I'd just turned 5). I clearly remember my folks brought back two framed wall displays of Tanzanian butterflies (held between glass plates) that we still had well into the '80s. I think the glass broke on them and they were thrown out. I don't recall any of them being wildly exotic-looking, but in my mind's eye there were lots of orange and yellow specimens....rather like the citrus mix pansies we grow at the nursery.

Wood or no wood, 32 species is still an excellent garden total and having never seen a White-letter Hairstreak, I'm just jealous you have them locally at all. But good luck in attracting them to your garden.