I have always had a keen interest in walking in the countryside and wildlife, but it wasn’t until meeting Steve Cheshire (owner of www.britishbutterflies.co.uk) in the latter half of 2003 that I first became interested in butterflies. I had previously noticed the odd fluttering in the garden at home but had never really appreciated their beauty, amazing lifecycle and sadly short life span. Furthermore I had never been able to identify much more than the “Cabbage” White (as it was always known to me as a child), Red Admiral and Peacock.

Steve has had more than a passing interest in butterflies for getting on for a decade and has devoted a vast amount of time and patience to photographing them and producing this detailed and educational web site. During 2004 I accompanied him on numerous outings into the countryside and I began to see for myself and learn to identify the variety of butterflies that are resident in the UK. After a year of observation, numerous amateur blurred shots from my not-too-ideal-cheap digital camera (mainly of lovely flowers after said butterfly had long flown off), and status as “photographer’s assistant” to Steve, for 2005 I decided that “if you can’t beat‘em, join ‘em” and invested in a more suitable digital camera.

I soon learned that a great deal of patience, stealth, and khaki combat-style gear is required - wearing shorts and exposing bare legs when up to your knees trying to photograph Green Hairstreaks in gorse bushes and White Admirals on Blackberry bushes can be quite painful. Wearing bright pink girly clothes or red ski-jackets is out of the question and I am now affectionately known as “Jungle Jane” when kitted out for a day in the field.

In the spring we went on various local walks and I started off by photographing Small Tortoiseshell, Peacock, Wood White, Comma, Brimstone and the like feeding on the Spring Orchids and Bluebell flowers. I had a fleeting glimpse of the Purple Emperor soaring high in the trees later in the year at Ryton Wood and managed a few shots of Marbled Whites which fortunately settle on vegetation at a much more suitable level for snapping. Silver-washed Fritillaries were also seen - the males proving very difficult to photograph as they never seemed to settle in their search for a suitable mate.

May 2005
Having become a member of Butterfly Conservation at the beginning of the year, in May we attended an organised day out with the Warwickshire branch at Draycote Water and Wolfhampcote railway cutting. At Draycote Water we saw and photographed Grizzled Skippers, another species that I was not at all familiar with, but very delicate and pretty with their brown/grey and white markings. A very pleasant afternoon was then spent at Wolfhampcote with an abundance of Green Hairstreak, more Grizzled Skippers, and a sighting of a Dingy Skipper.

The highlight of the year for me was the end of May when we had a holiday on the Norfolk Broads and were very fortunate to see a handful of Swallowtails at Hickling Broad basking on the reeds in the sunshine. A little difficult to photograph perched precariously on the boardwalk trying not to fall off into the water, but nevertheless a challenge! The following day was dull with little sunshine following rain overnight and we were not expecting to see much at Martham Broad during our Sunday morning stroll. However Steve just happened to stop where he spotted some Pink Campion flowers and to our delight he found a perfect Swallowtail low down in the reeds trying to keep warm and obviously not about to fly off anywhere. A wonderful photo-shoot ensued with us camouflaged amongst the reeds whilst folk sailed gently past in their boats on the Broad.

June 2005
In June we had our main holiday in Pembrokeshire with the intention of spotting Small Pearl-Bordered Fritillaries and Silver-studded Blue. Once again, Mother Nature surprised us when we visited St David’s Head on two occasions and discovered the Dark Green Fritillary. These also proved a challenge to photograph, wading up to our necks in bracken for the very few seconds when the hot-blooded males would actually settle. A visit to Skomer Island with very close encounters with the breeding Puffins and seabird colonies, although not butterfly-related, was the icing on the cake for me and my photographic exploits. We also spotted Small Pearl-Bordered Fritillaries in Pembrokeshire and in the Brecon Beacons en-route home.

July 2005
The summer continued with visits to Glapthorn Cow Pastures in Northamptonshire, Grafton Wood in Worcestershire and Otmoor RSPB Nature Reserve in Oxfordshire where I had read an article in the RSPB magazine about Brown Hairstreaks being present.

At Glapthorn we spent a pleasant day hunting in the Blackthorn bushes for Black Hairstreak and were rewarded with several sightings and a few good
photographs.

August 2005
Our visit to Grafton Wood in August proved extremely successful with sightings of 20+ different species of butterfly including a couple of Brown Hairstreaks and was so enjoyable that we returned two weeks’ later to photograph more Brown Hairstreaks and the Brown Argus - yet another first for me. The visit to Otmoor also proved successful in that before we hadn't even got out of the car before we spotted a Brown Hairstreak basking in the sunshine in the hedgerow surrounding the car park - for once it proved willing to pose for some lovely photographs. Typically though, as it goes with “butterfly hunting”, this was the only one we saw all day!

Further visits were also made to Ryton Wood and Wappenbury Wood in Warwickshire in search of White Admirals which proved very elusive and difficult to photograph - if only I was a foot or so taller to try and capture them as they always settled too high up in the trees dancing about on the leaves as if to taunt me.

October 2005
On our final holiday in October in Exmouth, Devon we expected to see very little in the way of butterfly sightings as it was so late in the season. We did get a very brief glimpse of a Clouded Yellow flitting about in the Autumn sunshine. Unfortunately it shot off over the bright red, sheer drop, Jurassic coastline cliff - naturally we weren’t inclined to pursue it - and so our butterfly photographic expeditions ended here for 2005.

Conclusion
My first (butterflying) year has been very rewarding and I have been lucky to have seen and photographed many of Britain’s less common butterflies when originally I would have been happy to manage a snap of a Red Admiral basking on a flower in my own back garden. I look forward to 2006 when difficult decisions will need to be made concerning holiday destinations and target species and the challenge will be set for Steve and I to beat our personal rarity sightings from 2005.

Debbie Hibbitt