Friday 8th May
Working in Oxfordshire, my partner Jenna was due to come down and visit for the weekend. The weather didn’t look great for an already planned trip to Pewsey Downs National Nature Reserve, as Jenna had never seen a Marsh Fritillary before.
Then some news came through on Facebook that Glanville Fritillaries were being seen on the Isle of Wight, a species we had both never seen and had originally planned to look for in June. There was a real chance their flight period might be over by then, so I got in touch with someone via Facebook who had photographed them. Kindly, he gave me the location, and we decided to book onto the Saturday morning ferry from Lymington to Yarmouth, hoping the forecast would hold.
Jenna arrived on Friday to beautiful sunshine, so we headed out to Pewsey Downs National Nature Reserve. It turned out to be a great decision.
Pewsey Downs is a classic chalk downland reserve in Wiltshire and one of the more reliable sites in southern England for the rare Marsh Fritillary. The population here is especially important because it represents a surviving natural metapopulation, maintained through careful grazing and habitat management rather than reintroduction.
Adonis Blue
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Pewsey White HorseSaturday 9th May
We got up at 4:30 this morning and drove an hour and a half down to Lymington in Dorset, managing to get on an earlier ferry as it wasn’t full. The weather was now forecast to be a nice 20 degrees. Why do we even take notice of the weather forecast? If you listened to it all the time, you’d never go anywhere.
Anyway, we boarded the ferry and enjoyed the early morning sun as we crossed over to the Isle of Wight.
The site a gentleman on Facebook had kindly given me was only a 15-minute drive from the ferry terminal, and when we parked up, we were met with beautiful views of the white cliffs and sea. Following the directions, we made our way down the coastal path and down some wooden steps to two ponds by the beach.
We had only been there ten minutes when Jenna’s eagle eye found a Glanville Fritillary in the undergrowth. We couldn’t believe she had found one so soon. Then the sun appeared, and suddenly we had at least five flying around us.
The Glanville Fritillary is Britain’s only butterfly now considered truly native only to the Isle of Wight, where its main populations survive on the island’s southern coastal landslips. Historically, it was more widespread across southern and eastern England, even reaching Lincolnshire, but by the mid-1800s it had disappeared from the mainland, leaving the Isle of Wight as its last natural stronghold.
The species exists as a metapopulation, with colonies naturally expanding and declining in cycles depending on weather, foodplant availability and parasitism. In good years, the butterfly can spread beyond its core sites and form temporary colonies elsewhere on the island.
A well-known mainland colony now exists at Hutchinson’s Bank in south London, believed to have originated from unofficial introductions around 2011. Although controversial because the species is not native there, the colony has become firmly established and is now one of the most reliable mainland sites to see the butterfly.
After enjoying views of the butterfly, we headed into Freshwater for a celebratory breakfast.
Our next move was a boat trip around The Needles; the speedboat we went on had us out there in no time.
The Needles are one of the most recognisable coastal features in the UK, and one I’ve always wanted to see. They are a line of three striking chalk stacks rising out of the sea just off the western tip of the Isle of Wight. Despite the name, there’s no needle-shaped rock; it comes from an older fourth stack called “The Needle”, which collapsed in the 18th century.
Geologically, they are remnants of a long chalk ridge that once extended from the Isle of Wight towards Dorset. Over thousands of years, erosion and marine action cut through the soft chalk, leaving these isolated stacks standing offshore. Their distinctive shape is constantly changing as the sea continues to wear them down.
Because of their exposed position and dangerous surrounding waters, a lighthouse was built in 1859 on the westernmost stack, replacing an earlier light at nearby Alum Bay. The Needles Lighthouse remains an iconic navigation marker today and, together with the coloured cliffs of Alum Bay and the chalk stacks themselves, the area has become one of the Isle of Wight’s most photographed landscapes.
Back on land, we headed back to the car and, unbelievably, a Glanville Fritillary practically landed at my feet.
Moving on from The Needles, we headed east towards Parkhurst Forest, where I wanted to try and locate the Speckled Yellow moth, a day-flying species on the wing in May and a moth I needed.
What a day. Having seen everything we needed, we headed back to Yarmouth to see if we could get an earlier ferry, which we did, as I had another day-flying moth site I wanted to visit on the way back home. We even managed to fit in an ice cream in the sunshine.
We arrived back at Lymington and headed west towards Badbury Rings, an old Iron Age hill fort owned by the National Trust. On arrival, the sun had followed us again, and we made our way up to the wooded area surrounded by calcareous grassland.
Our mission now was to try to find another day-flying moth, the Wavy-barred Sable. Jenna, of course, came up with the first sighting, but it flew off in the wind, and we couldn’t relocate it despite a frustrating twenty minutes of searching.
An hour passed, aimless wandering around, but we did find plenty of Dingy and Grizzled skippers, before I finally saw one sitting out on some vegetation not far from where Jenna had her sighting.
Grizzled skipper
What a day. We had connected with everything we had set out to see over the weekend.
Absolutely shattered, we sat down, took in the evening sunshine and finally headed home, arriving back just before 8pm for a well-earned curry!