Standing Hat
Where do you go when it has been raining the day before? Our idea was to go for a walk in the New Forest by keeping to the cycle tracks. These are hardcore paths usually with drainage ditches on either side - ideal for a walk when the ground is wet. So we decided to go for a walk from the Standing Hat car park near Brockenhurst in an anticlockwise direction as far as Denny Lodge and back. We hoped, if we were lucky, to see a pearl bordered fritillary during our walk.
There is one drawback with walking on cycle paths however and that is that they are also used by cyclists and on a warm sunny day during the school holiday period there are loads of them. Nevertheless we strode out bravely trying to ignore the sound of crunching gravel and the shouts of kids trying to control their parents. At one point we also had to contend with two dog cyclists trying to control a deaf dog. At least I think it was deaf as every time it went the wrong way the owners shouted at it for some time before it came back.
We did not have to go far before we saw our first pearl bordered fritillary which was feeding on a bugle flower. The upper side of a pearl bordered fritillary is quite well marked but the underside is the significant part on this butterfly. Not only is it the part where the so called pearls are located but it is the arrangement of the pearls that distinguish it from the small pearl bordered fritillary. The thing that distinguishes moths from butterflies is that butterflies usually come to rest with their wings open which means that the underside is difficult to see. No doubt in the past the keen butterfly hunter had a great big net with which to trap the butterfly and look at it at his leisure before pinning it in his glass case. This is not conducive to increasing the species however so we decided to kneel down on the grass and wait for the butterfly to find an upside down flower. Eventually we did see enough of the underside to identify the butterfly as a pearl bordered fritillary as it had two large pearls in the middle of the wing and no black marks round the edge pearls.
During our walk we came across several beetles which we later decided were Rose Chafers. They are a stubby form of cockchafer with an isosceles triangle on their back and are a metallic green or bronze colour. One of them whizzed past us whilst we were having lunch and looked like a miniature model aeroplane. The call of the cuckoo was never far away during our walk. We know we are never going to actually see one so try to avoid looking for it when we hear its call. Once we heard a cuckoo quite close on the left side of the path so we walked a few paces further on to try and catch sight of it. Passing over a noisy running stream we were surprised to hear the cuckoo calling over on the right side of the path at which point we gave up. There were several Redstarts darting from bushes to pick up grubs on the ground but we only came across them in single numbers.
The day was a hot and muggy one so we thought we were lucky to complete the walk without seeing any rain. In fact it was only a couple of hours after we got home that it heaved it down.
