I drove down to the Mendips in Somerset this morning to join a field trip at a place called Ubley Warren, organised by the Somerset local group of Butterfly Conservation. The target species for the day was small pearl bordered fritillary butterflies, a species I have seen before at Priddy Mineries, a short distance away. However, I thought I'd give another area a visit, particularly as a guided walk had been arranged for BC members,
The site itself is a former lead mining area, and there are plenty of dips and hollows amongst piles of rocks which have been left to be colonised by wild flowers and bracken.
I arrived an hour or so before the walk started, in order to avoid the traffic and found a space in the layby close to our meeting point. The walk had attracted ten participants plus the leader, although it seemed as if many knew each other from previous walks and some had roles within the local BC group. However, I was made welcome and we started to follow the path into the reserve.
One of the group had done a quick reccy and had already found a small copper down in a hollow which she pointed out to us. We also saw a large skipper nearby.
We climbed up a slope where gorse and bracken was all around, and I spotted the first of half a dozen green hairstreaks. Suddenly I noticed an orange butterfly flying past and over the gorse bushes out of site, a fritillary possibly? Then a member of the group pointed to a butterfly sunning itself near the ground, a small pearl bordered fritillary. We all had a chance to photograph it before if flew off, a good thing as it happened as these were the only two of our target species that we saw on the entire walk!
Although sunny when I had arrived, a bank of cloud swiftly caught us up, and with a bit of a breeze, it wasn't ideal butterfly spotting weather. However, it didn't seem to deter the small heath butterflies which were quite numerous, when the sun appeared from time to time, a few common blues and meadow browns showed up.
We made a circuit of the site, and worked out we could reach a popular area for SPBF just about the time when the next area of blue sky would be above us. However despite splitting into groups to scour the area, no small pearl bordered fritillaries appeared and we had to concede that either they were late this year or only few had emerged.
Towards the end of the route, I found Red Admiral although it preferred to shelter down in the vegetation.
After our two hours were up, other members of the group decided to remain and have their picnics, whether they had a further look for species after lunch I don't know. I decided that I would make my way home, as I had quite a journey ahead of me.
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