Friday 10th August - cathartic butterflying experience...
On Saturday 4th August, I travelled to the Isle of Man to visit my mother to celebrate her 80th birthday which fell the following day. I'd booked us into the Sefton Hotel for the Sunday champagne carvery, but sadly we never made it as my mum had a heart attack on the morning of her birthday and passed away two days later.
As anyone who has been in this situation will know, the next few days see you taken completely out of your natural comfort zone as you have to set grief aside in order to concentrate on the logistical realities of the funeral arrangements et al.
Wednesday and Thursday were simply awful, so when I awoke early on the Friday to find blue skies and warm temperatures, I felt obliged to take a little time out in an attempt to assuage the depression that had descended upon me.
I drove up to the Point of Ayre nature reserve, and with it being a weekday I pretty much had the whole place to myself. What's more, conditions were abnormally good, as not only was it unusually warm for the Isle of Man (20c at its peak), there was a virtual absence of wind even when standing on the exposed coast.
I believe it was a French naturalist who was once quoted as saying that "butterflies provide solace for the pain of living", and I suspect I will never again empathise quite so profoundly with those sentiments. For a glorious couple of hours, I simply cast aside the burdens accrued over the previous few days and was cheered up no end by the simple pleasure of being surrounded by butterflies in a wonderful setting on a particularly beautiful morning.
Now, the Isle of Man isn't renowned for its depth of species, yet in spite of that there were several notable things to report.
The main newsworthy point was the sheer numbers of Common Blues flying around this site. I wouldn't want to swear on oath but my gut instinct is that I have never seen so many of this species in a single place ever before in my life. I was on the heathland for about two hours and I walked a fair distance without retracing my steps, and I reckon I saw over 200. At any point, if you stopped and just looked around you would see them at all points of the compass. Of course, this kind of site is ideal for them, but given that there are many excellent habitats on the mainland that have suffered a paucity of numbers of this butterfly in 2012, it fair warmed my heart to see them in such glorious abundance on this often exposed island headland. The females were particularly interesting; most were predominantly brown but some were very blue indeed, and this one caught my eye not just because of it's 'blueness', but also due to its strange brown pattern on the upperwings along with a curious white-ish spot on each upper hindwing:
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This is an overview of the habitat that attracts them in such numbers, and at this time of year it is a joy to behold as the heather is a deep purple colour which contrasts beautifully with the green landscape and the copious yellow blooms that flower during August:
The Isle of Man is just 26 miles from Cumbria, and on a clear day you can see the mountains of the Lake District very clearly. Generally, this tends to happen in winter, but today the hills were distinctly visible in a summer environment, and they looked quite ethereal when seen from ground level, looking across the northern Manx plain beyond the Point of Ayre lighthouse:
Common Blues weren't the only species flying. There were a handful of Whites, 50-100 Meadow Browns, a Small Tortoiseshell, a single Wall Brown, a couple of dozen Small Heaths and even a Holly Blue in the scrubby area at the southern end of the site. However, there was one other butterfly seen in three figure numbers - Grayling.
I'd estimate I saw about 120, mainly in the dune area near to the shore. As ever with this species, the size and the markings were far from uniform. Manx Graylings seem to be bigger than mainland ones, and they have quite bold undersides. I photographed a few of them, but when I spotted a courting pair I followed them for a while as I knew that occasionally they can present open winged shots. I was delighted to capture the following image, not only because it gives a rarely seen look at the forewings, but also because it seems to show that the male (on the right, who is the one indulging in the 'wing-flicking') is intentionally coercing the female to come into contact with his androconial scales. This image shows quite clearly the female's antenna positioned directly above the male's sex brands, which one presumes is an intentional part of the pairing process:
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Whilst butterflies don't make headlines here, birds certainly DO. The Ayres reserve is renowned for hosting breeding Arctic Terns, whilst many other infrequently seen species use the northern tip of this island as a staging post. I'm by no means an expert when it comes to ornithology, but even I could tell that the large seabirds flying low over the ocean weren't gulls. I took a few photos and my original suspicions were confirmed - gannets....and lots of them.