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The Butterfly Isles
The Butterfly Isles by Patrick Barkham
A review by Richard Stewart
This is one of the best butterfly books l have read. It is a substantial hardback, the text covering 337 pages. There is a further 32 pages listing species seen in 2009, outlining butterfly families, giving details of recommended sites to visit and expanding notes from the text. In addition to acknowledgements and the index, a comprehensive list of ‘recommended reading’ covers a wide range. I was pleased to see The Great British Butterfly Survey included. Written by Robin Page it covers a similar year’s quest but in a very different style. Two sections of colour plates are included, one of mounted specimens and the other of the author’s photos. Attractive line drawings of different species, by Helen Macdonald, preface each chapter.
The text is eloquently written. I particularly enjoyed the succinct but memorable description of some species; the English Wood White is described as ‘an elegant drop of pearl’ . The challenge of seeing all of Britain’s 59 species in one year is interspersed with much humour and many references to the often bizarre actions of the ‘old collectors’ . Here there is a ready acknowledgement of his source, the two books by Michael Salmon, The Aurelian Legacy and The Aurelian ’ s Fireside Companion. The on-off relationship with his girlfriend adds a further dimension and right from the start the author admits he is not a butterfly expert. His skills have declined since childhood forays with his father, who gets lavish praise throughout as ‘the best butterfly companion of all’ . His quest in 2009 was a fine balancing act between his job as a features writer at The Guardian and the need to travel widely. However, this literary connection probably helped in enlisting the active help of ‘the great and the good’ lepidopterists, in particular those from Butterfly Conservation. He also made a wise decision to utilise the great strength of BC, its active and well-informed Branch members, in his search for rarer species. In fact he starts in winter, getting ‘his eye in’ again, searching for Brown Hairstreak eggs under the expert guidance of David Redhead. From here chapters chronologically cover the challenge, with a numbered list of species seen at the end of each chapter. Jeremy Thomas and Matthew Oates feature frequently, with a very full account of the Large Blue’s complicated life cycle, its extinction as a native species and the ongoing successful reintroduction.
Many pages are devoted to ‘The Curse of the Purple Emperor’ , possibly too many, as sometimes I felt the author was astride the ‘Britain’s premier butterfly ’ bandwagon, to the detriment of other species. The elusive Purple Hairstreak gets peripheral attention and the Grayling, a nationally declining species with one of the most intriguing and sophisticated courtship displays, is covered in just five lines. Obviously a book of this length will have some errors but I only found a few. Twice the difference between Essex and Small Skipper was wrongly described: it’s not that the former’s clubbed antennae are black, but rather their undersides. I also found the comment that ‘barely 500 people’ had seen the Queen of Spain Fritillary in Britain in the last 300 years to be a puzzling underestimate. For example, when two were at Minsmere for some time, the staff transported visitors to the private area where they were. On the day I went there was a steady stream of visitors and over the whole period l would
