Adonis males on black knapweed flowers |
I went to Rough Bank reserve near Stroud in mid July to look for its fabled Adonis, chalkhill and small blues and although it was a hot, sunny day, I must have been too early in the season and saw no blues at all, common, Adonis or otherwise. Rough Bank is called Nottingham Scrubs on the OS map, though it must be eighty miles from Nottingham, my old home town.
It is a beautiful area of steeply sloping flowery grassland in a deep Cotswold valley on calcareous oolitic limestone and was purchased by Butterfly Conservation, along with a few acres of unimproved pastureland, a few years ago. It will now be managed with butterflies in mind. Although it was disappointing to see no blues that day, there were plenty of commoner browns, vanessids and whites on the site (see 'A Summer Meadow' in my video section), so I resolved to come back later in the season when Adonis might have emerged.
There were plenty of second flight Adonis around when I revisited the site in mid August. I had only seen one or two fleeting glimpses of this stunningly coloured butterfly before, so I was thrilled there were so many around, perhaps twenty of thirty seen over a two hour visit.
The flash of heavenly blue, enhanced by a slight iridescence which gives the wings a luminous quality, is a breathtaking sight.
Common blue males are sometimes mistaken for Adonis but their lovely blue wings have a violet tinge and this is complicated by the fact that occasional Adonis males have a somewhat violet hue.
The diagnostic feature is in the white fringes of the wing, which are crossed by black markings in Adonis but are plain white in the common blue.
Two Adonis and a chalk hill blue |
The black and white fringes are also present in females, which greatly aids their identification.
Female Adonises are similar to other blue females but also have punctuated wing fringes |
Adonis warming up at ground level |
It was thought that Adonis might go extinct in Britain by the turn of the millennium, which would have been a tragedy and a disgrace. Conservation efforts since then and a better understanding of its ecological requirements, along with the return of rabbits, have seen a gradual improvement in the butterfly's fortunes and it seems to be making a comeback in many of its old haunts, though there are no grounds for complacency.