MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD BUTTERFLY HUNTING

[Paul Harfield]

As my previous post mentioning childhood memories seemed to strike a chord with some of you I thought I would start this new topic/thread for discussion. I will kick it off but there must be many others who have had this interest since childhood.

As a 9 or 10 year old the center of my butterfly world was an area of mature wasteland about 2 minutes from my house. We referred to it as 'The Wasteground'. This was a small area of land previously occupied by a couple of large 1930's semis which had been demolished in th mid sixties. 'The Wasteground' was a mecca for some of the local kids and supported many childhood activities such as den building, wargames, hide and seek, BMX (or whatever the then equivalent was) and annoying the younger kids! This was in the days when kids were allowed to roam around their local patch without a care in the world.
'The Wasteground' was a small gently sloping area with irregular contours. It had clumps of mature trees, long grass, wild flowers, mature shrubs, bare ground and was crisscrossed by distinct paths. It was a real mix of habitats. At the right time of year it would yield the following species Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Painted Lady, Comma, Speckled Wood, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Small Heath, Small White, Large White, Green Veined White, Orange Tip, Brimstone, Small Copper, Common Blue, Holly Blue, Small Skipper, Large Skipper and a couple of times I saw Green Hairstreak. Thats twenty species and I think quite impessive looking back. In those days I was probably armed with a jamjar and a 20p net from the local hardware store! Even so I do not think we damaged the environment too much. That was done when the developers moved in, cleared the site and built 20 or so houses in the late 1980's. I am sure the summers were longer and sunnier back then, or is that my imagination?

At the bottom of my Great Aunties garden, a few miles away from where I lived, was a small wood. I remember very well seeing Large Tortoiseshell there, normally basking in the sun on her pathway. I did not realise until quite recently how lucky I might have been to see them. I only ever saw 1 or 2 at a time and never investigated the wood further, I was too young. Again it was the developers who moved in and cleared the area for housing back in the late 1970's, very sad.

Apart from the obvious thrill of seeing adults emerging first hand, I think the highlight of my younger butterfly years was seeing White Admirals flying for the first time. So graceful yet so strong in flight and beautiful with it, stunning.

As I got a little older I began rearing commercially bought British , European and exotic species. I even had the superb idea of building a large flight cage in my parents garden. This came to fuition with much help from my parents a tubular metal frame with a properly stitched net. Unfortunately we had not taken into account the local cats who destroyed it before I had a chance to use it to any great degree. One slightly amusing situation I remember was when I ordered a batch of Edwards Atlas Moth eggs from wwb. Nothing wrong with that but, as some of you will be aware, livestock delivery varies from return of post to months after ordering. In this case I think it was a few weeks and the package duly arrived whilst I was on a week long school trip out of the country. Livestock is also quite unreliable, especially eggs that are only in that stage for a short period. My mother carefully undid the package and yes, low and behold a load of tiny caterpillars. I think my mother panicked a little but luckily I had foreseen this eventuality and left clear instuctions. I think my Mum suffered more than the larvae.

Into my mid teens other interests and life in general gradually took over. Anyway I think I have rambled too much now. Time for someone else to recount their memories.

[ChrisC]

lovely post. as a child it was fishing and birds mainly for me, though admiring all the other wildlife that came along was always part of it, i remember being 9 or 10 on a fungi foray in Perivale Wood and, being a butchers son, the only one i could remember seeing was beefsteak fungus. Watching the coypu at minsmere(eradicated in the 8o's now i believe). but I think butterflies played a part as on my science folder (approximately 8 years old at middle school.) i remember my teacher Mr Shah commenting on the picture of a swallowtail that i had drawn on the cover of my science book. (the only butterfly i have gone out to specifically find since at hickling broad). but my real interest in them only sparked around 2003 when i remember noticing my first comma, didn't recall seeing one before so bought collins guide to british wildlife to ID it. then my first garden (lived above shops til my early twenties) which was a haven for butterflies locally. then digital cameras and the internet came along. Moths took over from butterflies, then as any of my diary readers will atest i found a soft spot for spiders. then a member of this forum, Susie, directed me here and i've not looked back. various outings, watching chalkhills like blue confetti blowing up the hill at Denbies. my local woodland resembling, (to me at least) a tropical greenhouse with Silver washed and white admirals. I know i have always felt young at heart, but these experiences are still very new to me and i feel like a kid in a sweet shop. I wouldn't even call it an interest for me really, as i spend more time just sitting watching/ marvelling at them than anything else.

Chris

[Padfield]

Thank you for these postings!

I bet I can transport plenty of older members back to the sunny hedgerows of Memory Lane by showing them the cover of my first butterfly book, which the seven-year-old Guy Padfield got in 1971:



(Even though I'm linking there to a third-party site, there are no copyright issues as it's simply the cover of a book long out of copyright)

I couldn't find any shots of the haunting paintings from inside the book online except this one, reproduced in a notepad:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4043/442 ... dee03c.jpg

Although I rapidly graduated onto more substantial books, those paintings still define childhood butterflies for me.

Guy

[David M]

Good topic for a thread, and one that takes me back to those carefree days of my own youth in St. Helens, near Liverpool.

I was interested in butterflies from junior school and whenever we went on family outings I would take my little fishing net mounted on a bamboo cane and catch whatever came my way - usually common species such as Small Tortoiseshells and Meadow Browns, but occasionally scarcer ones, like Green Hairstreaks when we went walking in the Trough of Bowland in Lancashire and Northern Brown Argus & High Brown Fritillaries when in the Lake District (capturing the latter would be illegal now!!)

My own patch was a half mile stretch of south facing embankment on the A580 which ran between Liverpool and Manchester. I would troop down there assiduously throughout the butterfly season even though there were only a handful of common species that were found there. The main thing that strikes me looking back was how common Wall Browns were. I doubt if there are any now.

In all the years I spent there I only really had two highlights - one August I spotted the only Hedge Brown I'd ever seen there. I was absolutely thrilled and promptly went to Freshfield Reserve at Formby with my dad to catch as many more as I could, transporting them back to my patch as if I could single-handedly establish the species!

The other moment that stands out was seeing a female Clouded Yellow in the hot summer of 1983, although by then I knew this was a migrant species and as such would probably be a one off - and it was.

By 1984 other passions were starting to take over and although I always kept an eye out for butterflies (seeing my first local Comma that year) I never again devoted the bulk of my leisure time to butterflies. Like many others on here, now that I'm too old to be an active participant in most of the sports that I indulged in during my teens, twenties and early thirties, my interest in the more sedate fascinations of youth has emerged afresh and I really believe that my passion for butterflies will be the last thing standing if I manage to make it to old age.

I had a few butterfly books when I was young, but the one I carried around with me was this:



I don't know what happened to my original, but I managed to get hold of a copy at the BC AGM last November, and the mere smell of the pages took me back to my early teens.

[Rogerdodge]

Guy
If you fancy reliving your childhood, there are half a dozen of these on EBay right now, including a first edition.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from= ... Categories
Cheers - and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year to you.

[Padfield]

Thanks Roger - but I still have my original, I'm happy to say!

A happy new year to you, too!

Guy

[Michaeljf]

It's always interesting to read how other folks got into butterfies when they were young.

I’m not sure I have childhood memories of butterflies; I’m guessing I properly became interested in them when we moved from Weybridge to Old Woking (Surrey) when I was about 10. Our new house had a nice, big garden with a few trees and shrubs, but also, a local common was accessible from the end of our road. In the late afternoons and weekends this became my own private world. The butterflies and moths in the common soon became familiar to me along with the seasons: Brimstones and Orange-tips were signs of the spring, and summer was for the Red-Admirals, Peacocks, Commas and Small Tortoiseshells. There was a wide range of deciduous trees and I got to know them in relation to the butterfly and moth food-plants. I would love to investigate the Alder Buckthorns in summer to find the Brimstone caterpillars sitting in the middle of the leaves, or the Peacock caterpillars on the stinging nettles. There were also plenty of Walls and Speckled Woods, and larger moths such as the Emperor and Buff-tip Moth and Lime, Poplar and Large Elephant Hawkmoths, with their exciting caterpillars quite easily found from the ‘leaf munching’. I would walk further out into the common and find other lovely spots, such as a route leading up to a local farm with Lombardy Poplar trees and Puss-Moth caterpillars feeding on these (I can still smell the Poplar trees!).

Of course, I did keep some caterpillars to rear at home - getting fresh food for them every day after school - and releasing them when they emerged as adults. There were a few frightening stories as a result for certain members of my family, such as when a batch of Buff-tip caterpillars pushed the ‘escape hatch’ in their jar and went a-wandering into my parents bedroom. My interest in the butterflies and moths also resulted in me trying to draw all the illustrations I had seen from local library books into my own book. This helped me increase my drawing skills quickly though the drawings would have been better if I had learnt to use a pencil rather than doing the illustrations free-hand with a black ‘bic’ biro. Oh well, you do the best with what you have at the time...

To help with ID’s of the species, I did have the two Observer books (I had the ‘British Butterflies’ and ‘British Larger Moths’ – I still have my original copies – with the caterpillar illustrations coloured-in by myself!), a couple of larger books by Robert Godden were the only books I could find, though the local Library had a selection of books based on type of landscape ‘Dune and Moorland life’ etc (I can’t remember who published these, though they were a series). Interestingly, I never knew that in Surrey I was only down the road from good habitats for Purple Emperors, but in those days, finding out about where butterflies where was quite difficult. Remember, no internet, and writing to people by letter if you wanted to communicate? Oh, the good old days.

Michael


A few pages from illustrations I drew for my butterfly book, aged about 11. I don't really know why I went for pink writing, but hey ho.


Even then I dreamed of seeing a Purple Emperor caterpillar...
and it's re-assuring to see my handwriting was as bad then as it is now!

[Mark Tutton]

This is a great thread and I am somewhat startled about the similarities so i'll recount my tale.

You will have to forgive some of the 'non PC' subjects as my tale starts in abvout 1968 when it was quite acceptable to collect butterflies and I definately could not afford a camera - let alone film and processing at the age of 11! Rest assured that my interest in killing anything only lasted for a few years to the point that I have been a vegetarian for the last thirty years.
My interests were similarly mostly fishing and birds - I was a member of the YOC if anyone remembers - but my cousin lived opposite some wasteland that was covered in buddlia and one summer we set about catching numerous red admirals, painted ladies, peacocks and small tortoiseshells. These to were caught with bamboo poled fishing nets, and imprisoned in Robertsons jam jars before releasing them in my cousins garden over the road.
This fired both of our interests and armed with the Observers book of butterflies we explored the slopes of Portsdown Hill discovering many new species - including Wall Browns so numerous we dismissed them as 'just another brown'. Sadly there are none there now. On a trip to Brighton we discovered Worldwide Butterflies and bought some collecting kit and my mothers sewing machine was borrowed to sew up my net.
Over the course of the next few years we amassed a small collection limiting ourselves to four of each species. These were housed in beautifully crafted 'pitch pine' boxes handmade by my grandfather who was a shipwright. I seem to remember that my cousin became a recorder for Monks Wood at around this time [at about 14yrs of age!] an we dutifully recorded our sightings form Portsown Hill on brown index cards.
Although we never discovered any rare species - I have vague recollections of seeing some Duke of Burgundy Fritillaries on the downs near Goodwood.
My Grandfather - although not having any specific interest in the natural world - was always keen to take us on trips by train to the downs around Petersfield, Chichester and of course the New Forest. I have vivid memories of seeing hoards of SWF and White Admiral in the woods to the East of Brockenhurst station. I also clearly remember being taken to the IOW by my Pops to collect fossils at Blackgang Chine one spring - we found many Ammonites but the best find was two furry black caterpillars which we later identified as Glanville Fritillaries - what a find.
I also remember being bowled out in a school cricket match as I watched my first ever Clouded Yellow drift across the pitch!
My interest has been reawakened in more recent years by a chance encounter with a Silver Spotted Skipper and although some species have dissappeared from my local patch - Portsdown Hill - like the Wall Brown and Dark Green Fritillary Small Blues have appeared where there used to be none and similarly Chalkhill Blues.
A car and the internet has allowed my list swell significanly some 40 yrs on but I still remember the excitment of visiting new places with my cousin and Pops on the train wondering what would show up.

[MikeOxon]

I seem to have been a late developer compared with previous contributors to this thread. I did, however, have an early interest in photography, as my Father was a keen amateur photographer. It was black and white in those days, so not much good for nature photography!

It was my discovery of Kodachrome in my teens which sent me looking for more colourful subjects. I grew up in the North West, where butterflies were not so prolific; I remember that Small Tortoiseshells were often referred to locally as "Red Admirals" It was only when I moved South that I saw my first real Red Admiral -sunning itself on a pillowcase on a washing line! Looking at the photo, 40 years later, I notice that it is var. bialbata

Southbourne, West Sussex - 1972
Werra 1 with Kodachrome II film

One of my earliest reasonable butterfly photos was of a Small Tortoiseshell, taken on Kodachrome in 1976. I was disappointed that there was a processing fault which produced a blue line across the transparency, for which Kodak compensated me with a free film. Fortunately, in digitising the image, I was able to remove most of the ill effects!

QE Forest, Petersfield, Hants - September 1976
Pentax SP1000 with Kodachrome 25 film

Mike

[millerd]

Early memories... I was brought up initially in North London, and the 1950s semi had a reasonable garden (not the postage stamp plot new houses come with these days). I can remember the Michaelmas Daisies best of all, covered with Small Tortoiseshells, Red Admirals and Peacocks every September. A Comma was a rarity, and finding a caterpillar on a nettle at the end of the garden was amazing. I can also remember my mother finding a hibernating Brimstone and coaxing it to drink sugar water - I don't think it survived... I can remember a trip to Guernsey in 1966, and being entranced by a Painted Lady in the sand dunes opposite the hotel. On the same holiday, along the coast I discovered a colony of thousands of blue butterflies. I think now they must have been Silver-studded Blues, but I just remember how there were clouds of little blue gems. I can also remember a large area of waste ground near my grandparents' house in Swalecliffe (East Kent, between Whitstable and Herne Bay), where I saw my first Clouded Yellows.

For inspirational literature, the PG Tips tea card set was my bible, and then the Observers Book. Both of these encouraged small boys to catch and set butterflies, so I'm afraid I made sporadic attempts at the former, but had little success with the latter. A move to Somerset at age 11 opened up some new species: Silver-washed Fritillaries and a colony of Green Hairstreaks stick in the memory in particular. Also around this time was my first encounter with Adonis Blues at Maiden Castle on a school trip - at that time they were declining, and I had no idea that this was one of their remaining strongholds.

My first trip abroad aged 15, to a relatively unspoilt Corfu, brought me the Scarce Swallowtail and the Spotted Fritillary, and an enormous Grayling (Great-banded?) battering itself against a window. I've never really lost the interest, but it sort of went into dormancy until a few years ago, when digital photography made capturing images of these beautiful insects become a real possibility without the hit and miss of using film. The least said about my efforts with a standard SLR the better...

Dave

[Neil Freeman]

Excellent thread and so many memories brought back by it.
I was another one who was a child in the seventies and remember the seemingly neverending school summer holdays when the weather always seemed sunnier than now. Many a day was spent chasing and catching butterflies on patches of waste ground and fields around my parents house.
I also assembled a collection of sorts which I housed in an old filing cabinet that my dad got from somewhere and lined the drawers with cork.

I had retained a passing interest in butterflies through the years when my time always seemed to be taken up by other things but had not done anything with it until summer of 2010 when my passion was re-ignited by watching Dark Green Frtillaries whilst on holiday in Cornwall. Later that year I attemped to take some photos with an old digital compact camera which soon made me look at getting something better. I bought a second hand Panasonic Lumix FZ38 which I have been using throughout 2011 and am very happy with the results I am getting with it...still loads of room to improve though.

One thing that has struck me is the way diferent species fortunes have fared since my childhood. I remember Wall Browns in abundance by our house in the midlands but never saw a Speckled Wood. Now the Wall Browns have vanished and Speckled Woods are everywhere. Other species that I never saw locally were Hedge Brown or Comma but there are now good numbers of both these around here. Also Essex Skippers have spread this far in the intervening years.

I also had the Observers books of British Butterflies and Larger British Moths and was pleased to find I still had both of these tucked away in a box in the loft. I have spent a good few evenings recently comparing what they say with what is now said in my new Butterfly books that I purchased last year....fascinating to see how much ties in with my own observations regarding shrinking and expanding of some species ranges.

I obviously now have the abilty to travel much further afield than those days and during 2011 managed to see and photograph 41 species, all within about an hour and a half drive from my house which is only a couple of miles from where I lived back then. I have been amazed to discover how many good locations there are near me that I never new about and can only reflect on how many have been lost to housing/development over the past thirty or forty years without me even knowing they were there.

Heres looking forward to the next thirty odd years and hoping that there will be someone posting a similar tread then.

Neil F.

[Susie]

Unlike the rest of you I don't have any memories of childhood butterfly hunting. My only recollection of butterflies as a child was of a buddleia by our back door being covered with them, other than that I think I took them for granted. Oh, apart from the dastardly cabbage whites, the caterpillars of which I was taught to pick off the cabbages and squish! I did like the outdoors though and collected all sorts of interesting bits and pieces I came across like frog skulls and lizard skins, empty egg shells, bits of lichen and stones. I have far greater memories of birds, crickets, fish, tadpoles and my beautiful pet slug (brown with an orange frill around the edge and absolutely huge! ). Even though I grew up in suburban London my memories were mainly of running around on waste bits of land, making camps and having fires, climbing trees and generally enjoying being outside when I was quite a young child. Definitely not being the well behaved young lady my mum had hoped I would be. My parents and my grannies knew an awful lot about plants and what was suitable to eat and what not to touch with a barge pole, like deadly nightshade, and I am lucky they passed a bit of this knowledge on to me. I'm still not confident when it comes to picking fungi though, I'd rather buy it and be safe!

In my teens I lost interest and in my early 20s and owning my own garden at last I started "cottage garden" style gardening which was quite insect friendly I guess. In my 30s ChrisC's enthusiasm for natural history rubbed off on me and I haven't looked back.

[Paul Harfield]

I am glad that this thread has brought back some pleasant memories. It is great to read them all and see so many similarities with my own. There seem to be a fair few of us that were kids in the seventies, great times!
I also had the Observers books. My copy of Observers British Butterflies was an old 1950's edition of my Nans and was very well thumbed. I also had Larger Moths and Insects and Spiders. I had a few others all of which are still around somewhere. However it was not until I got a copy of Robert Goodens 'British Butterflies A Field Guide' that the emphasis in the text had started to move away from the collecting aspect. This was the first butterfly book I had that was a new release and the first one that had proper colour photos, distribution charts and flight periods of all the species, it was my bible. Many of the other books seem to have been written in the 'dark ages' by comparison. Sadly I have mislaid my copy, perhaps I should look on ebay.

[David M]

it was not until I got a copy of Robert Goodens 'British Butterflies A Field Guide' that the emphasis in the text had started to move away from the collecting aspect. This was the first butterfly book I had that was a new release and the first one that had proper colour photos, distribution charts and flight periods of all the species, it was my bible. Many of the other books seem to have been written in the 'dark ages' by comparison. Sadly I have mislaid my copy, perhaps I should look on ebay.

That was my indispensable item of literature too. I actually went into my father's loft a year or so ago as I still have a few bits and pieces stored up there. I'd assumed this book would be up there but sadly it wasn't. However, when I went to the BC AGM at Cheltenham Racecourse last November, I was delighted to find two for sale at one of the stalls. I managed to replace my original for the princely sum of £2!!

[Michaeljf]

Hi Jack,

Firstly thanks for starting your interesting thread about discovering butterflies and childhood (or young) memories. You mentioned about Robert Godden's British Butterflies book, I believe copies are available on http://www.abebooks.co.uk (you should be able to use the link below) or alternatively go to their website and search either for 'British Butterflies' or 'Robert Goodden' (that's how they've spelt his name, I can't remember if that's correct). There are several copies available from different sellers, mostly varying in price and 'state of quality'!

Michael

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/Searc ... &x=72&y=19

[Paul Harfield]

Hi Jack,

Firstly thanks for starting your interesting thread about discovering butterflies and childhood (or young) memories. You mentioned about Robert Godden's British Butterflies book, I believe copies are available on http://www.abebooks.co.uk (you should be able to use the link below) or alternatively go to their website and search either for 'British Butterflies' or 'Robert Goodden' (that's how they've spelt his name, I can't remember if that's correct). There are several copies available from different sellers, mostly varying in price and 'state of quality'!

Michael

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/Searc ... &x=72&y=19

Many thanks for the pointer

[NickMorgan]

When I was 11 my father moved to the Camargue. I spent my school holidays there and for my next birthday he gave me The Field Guide to the Butterflies of Britain and Europe by Higgins and Riley and a butterfly net. However, he thought it best that I left them with him in the Camargue, "where it would be more useful than if I brought it back to Scotland"!!!
They stayed with him while he moved to Africa and then back to the Vosges in France. It wasn't until he moved back to Scotland nine years ago that I managed to get my hands on on the book!
I have to admit, that with my limited knowledge I found the identification of butterflies in France very difficult as there was just so much choice! I didn't like seeing the butterflies struggling in the net or a jar while I tried to figure out what it was. It was much easier to learn to identify them here with the limited number of possible species.
(He still has the net!)

[MikeOxon]

my beautiful pet slug (brown with an orange frill around the edge and absolutely huge!

Not many people would describe a slug as beautiful! I photographed this splendid example last Autumn in the Beech woods near Nettlebed, Oxon. He is munching on a fungus and seems to have achieved a good colour match.

Nettlebed, Oxon - 27th September 2011
Nikon D300s with Tamron 90mm - 1/180s@f/6.7 with SB600 flash

Mike

[Susie]

That is rather a splendid chap! Mine was quite similar to that but on a far larger scale and with a darker brown body.