Chequered skipper is a beauty to behold
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THE small, beautiful dappled chequered skipper seems to have always played an important part in my relationship with wildlife.
I am reminded of this every time the organisation Butterfly Conservation brings out its frequent reports on its present status in Scotland.
The chequered skipper and I go back very many years since I was warden at the Castor Hanglands National Nature Reserve in Northamptonshire.
The main interest of the reserve was butterflies and moths and the most outstanding butterfly we had was the chequered skipper.
Little did we know that by about 1975 it would disappear completely from that southern part of England.
I left a few years before then and moved to the north west of Scotland and I covered the NNRs in the Ardnamurchan area. This included Aruindle Oakwood where there were, and still are, chequered skippers.
The chequered skipper now occurs within a few miles radius of Fort William and nowhere else in the UK.
How ironic that I should move before it became extinct in England to the place where it now only occurs, that far north in Scotland!
In Northamptonshire I ran some breeding cages so I could find out more about these small butterflies that are only about one-inch across the wings.
Their small size is more than compensated for by orange brown colouring and to see them flitting from foodplant to foodplant such as the woodland bugle is pure delight.
In contrast I remember the first time I went to Ariundle and it seemed like a dream, as if I was walking though the Castor Hanglands woodlands, rides and glades once again.
The only difference, I was to find out later, was that in England it was different grass as food for the caterpillars than at Ariundle.
Fortunately I was able to bring some of my management experiences to bear at the Fort William sites, such as widening of the rides and gladeas and some grazing.
What is interesting and intriguing is all the conjecture as to where the Fort William chequered skippers came from.
There have even been suggestions that some collector brought some up from England and released them and the rest is history. Others talk of glacial relicts but the short answer is that nobody really knows.
One interesting development was the re-introduction in 1995 to some of the very old haunts of the butterfly in Lincolnshire.
The origin of such a re-introduction was discussed and specimens examined from various places. In the end it was decide that, genetically, the closest relatives were to be found in Belgium and that is where they were brought from.
That was a surprise as everyone thought the Scottish colonies would be more closely related. However, for various reasons the Lincolnshire experiment failed.
There is probably now more attention and recording paid to the Fort William colonies than ever before.
What has come out of this is the increased number of new colonies that have been located. There has been a slight extension to its known range, but not much.
I well remember organising all the wardens in the north west region to carry out, on a rota, a two-week survey and we added a number of new colonies. Access was the problem as some colonies were far from any roads.
These days the chequered skipper is one of the rarest butterflies to be found in the UK.
Many people like to try and record every species of butterfly in the UK in one year and by far the most difficult is the chequered skipper as it is so far north and the Highland weather is so fickle.
As for the new revised edition of The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland that has just been published, I hope some readers have book tokens which they can use as this is by far the best butterfly book on the market and unlikely to be equalled in the future.
Part of this is because of Richard Lewington’s simply superb illustrations that, in my opinion, have never been matched by anyone.
The text by Jeremy Thomas is fully complementary to this, creating a book you must have on your bookshelves.
