On Wings Of Wonder

A rare butterfly's delicate journey highlights the importance of preserving nature's most fleeting wonders

- by POLLY PULLAR

THE sun has been elusive all month. I watch a party of house sparrows feed their eager, wing-trembling fledglings in a rambling rose bush, its prickles and obstreperous habit providing a predator-proof stockade. Sounds of their chatter drift in through the window.

They are one of the few bird species that did well in our garden during the cold, wet summer, which highlighted the repercussions of our changing climate.

The year 2024 was not a good year for butterflies, and I saw few. Essentially cold blooded, a butterfly's body doesn't produce heat and requires sun or a warm, sheltered spot to stimulate its flight muscles.

Being in the heart of Scotland, forecasts differ enormously, but perhaps we might be luckier slightly further east, and that is where I am heading today.

Everyone adores butterflies. They enchant us with their vibrant colours and form, their metamorphosis and life cycles, and in some species their extraordinary migrations. The Victorians collated vast collections, pinning them to frame them or adding them to gruesome taxidermy and egg collections. We are wiser, and though most butterflies are in decline, photography has replaced the need to capture and preserve them as a means of foolproof ID.

Butterflies have flight periods. It's no use going to look for a specific species that is not on the wing at a given time. Today I am accompanying Anthony McCluskey, conservation manager with the charity Butterfly Conservation. He's running a special workshop teaching volunteers how to survey for a particularly enchanting butterfly that only occurs in parts of northern England and Scotland – the northern brown argus. It’s a species that is included on the Scottish Biodiversity List, and one that is of principal importance for conservation.