PART ONE - GERMANY
Until recently Germany had not been on my radar as a potential butterfly destination. It isn’t as well visited by the travelling enthusiast and the tour operators as such countries as France, Spain and Greece, and doesn’t have a reputation as a biodiversity hotspot. That’s not to say of course that there aren’t butterflies of interest to be found there, and during the planning phase of my 2024 European Butterfly Campaign I did come across one compelling reason for me to make a visit; the Northern Chequered Skipper occurs at a couple of sites near Hamburg, at its most westerly European limit, and I was rather keen to add this butterfly to my life-list this year.
So it came to pass that I flew out solo from Manchester on Monday 27th May on my first ever visit to this country, a four-night stay based in the city of Geesthacht, just south-east of Hamburg. Of course, as always prior to a European trip, I had been keeping my eye on the weather forecasts before my departure, and as it got closer to D-Day the BBC weather app was showing worse and worse graphics. By the time I was due to fly out the situation was looking dire. Dark clouds, rain and low temperatures were predicted all week, apart from the first half of Monday, which promised to be mild with some sunshine. It looked like my best chance of success would be if the EasyJet Gods got me into Hamburg airport on time and I could get straight on the road and out to my first site promptly. I had an early flight and kept all fingers crossed.
Once landed in Hamburg around 10am, it occurred to me that another reason I had never visited Germany before might have been because I know very little German. I reckoned I had about a dozen words, and five of them were “eins”, “zwei”, “drei”, “vier” and “funf” which didn’t leave me with many more to play with. The hire car pick-up was smooth but did require me to expand my vocabulary. My first challenge at the hire car multi-storey car park was to learn the difference between ausfahrt and einfahrt – this is rather important. Thank the Deities for Google Translate! Starting up my car, I noted that the dashboard display was kindly offering me Fahrtinfo - I was beginning to think I could get to grips with this German-speaking malarkey quite easily now; I just needed to master the judicious use of fahrt, and surely success was guaranteed?
The drive from the airport to my first target site went smoothly and shortly before 11:00 I had parked up and was walking into a large nature reserve to the north of Hamburg. This was an extensive mosaic of damp woodland, wet meadows, grasslands, and areas of wet heath, covering several square miles. The weather was OK, but there were remarkably few insects on the wing, apart from a plenitude of mosquitos. More alarmingly, many areas of the reserve were clearly “off limits” with warning signs that didn’t require too much translation. It looked like many of the most promising habitat patches were going to be inaccessible to the travelling Lepidopterist.
I walked the woodland tracks for several hours but by early afternoon I had seen just one Orange-tip and three Green-veined Whites. Shortly after 2pm, having located a particularly promising-looking area, I was surveying the surrounding grasslands when a German chap appeared, camera around his neck, pushing a bicycle. I shall refer to him as Herr Weiss, although I have no idea what his name really was. He began talking to me, in German of course, and although I was tempted to try out some linguistic skills, I refrained from utilising any of my newly acquired fahrts and confessed to him that I spoke no German. Fortunately, he spoke reasonable English and we were able to communicate well enough. We were both looking for the same thing, the Northern Chequered Skipper. He was local, knew the site well and assured me that we were in the best place to see them, but that they had already been on the wing for three weeks and he thought that they were about finished. This was not what I wanted to hear. We chatted for a while then went our separate ways, absorbed in the hunt.
About an hour later I bumped into Herr Weiss again, who informed me that he had just seen a male Northern Chequered Skipper at nectar. He showed me a photograph on his camera that he had taken right where we were stood. I was as green as the surrounding canopy! I really wanted to see the male of this species. The female Northern Chequered (sylvicolus) bears a passing resemblance to the regular Chequered Skipper (palaemon), but the male silvicolus is quite a different looking creature. Herr Weiss had to leave now, but wished me luck with my searches, and I resolved to stay close to where the male had been seen for the rest of the afternoon if necessary. There was a small, sheltered clearing just next to where the butterfly had been seen. It was a real suntrap, with some nectar, and some taller perches of vegetation. Half a dozen Banded Demoiselles were bouncing about in this patch of sunlight and had captured my attention. Suddenly there was a flash of yellow as a skipper-like butterfly chased one of the Demoiselles away. YES! A male Northern Chequered Skipper landed right in front of me. Wow! He was so amenable and friendly. He barely left this patch for the next hour and a half. He posed nicely for me, occasionally making rapid darts to defend his lek, but never going far away, and frequently returning to the same perch. I was thrilled!
The rest of the week was dismal. The weather varied from poor to awful. I spent many hours casing out a second site for the species but was defeated by the lack of sunshine. On Thursday I returned to the first site and amazingly my male was still there in the same tiny clearing, still patrolling his territory during a brief bright spell, waiting for a girlfriend. I hope he got lucky. I met another group of German enthusiasts who informed me that silvicolus is very difficult to find at this site, and this year it has been particularly rare. They kindly showed me where they had seen a female that morning, but despite patient searching for several hours, and revisiting on the way back to the airport on Friday, the weather again defeated me.
So, the delightful male photographed above was the only one I saw and goes down as my most expensive ever life-tick! I reckon he comes in at around £800. I have done a few single-species trips in the past – Zeller’s Skipper and False Ringlet for example – but at least those trips produced the desired species by the dozen or more. Then again, I know I just have done, but can you really put a price on the experience of seeing such a gorgeous and unique butterfly for the first time? At the end of the day, I had been successful and got the required result. I could return to Blighty with my head held high!
