All about the Natural History and History of the Northwest of England
Padiham on Parade is on the 29th and 30th of June this year, it’s a whole weekend themed around the 1940s and well worth visiting as there’s lots of events and things to see for all ages and interests.
Here’s some photos from the last couple of year’s events;
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The chirping of grasshoppers is a familiar sound in the British countryside during the summer months and certainly contributing its song to this chorus is the Common Field Grasshopper, Chorthippus brunneus, which is one of our most common and widespread grasshopper species.
Its scientific name is rare in being perfectly descriptive of the creature, (you do wonder how some of them came about!) and comes from the ancient Greek word chor, which means ‘sing’ and also gave rise to the word ‘chorus’, thippus, which means ‘jump’ and brunneus, simply meaning ‘brown’.
Common field grasshoppers belong to an order of insects called the Orthoptera, which derives from the Greek ortho meaning ‘straight’ and ptera meaning ‘wing’, which includes grasshoppers, crickets and locusts. They are fairly large grasshoppers, typically around 2cm long, and while they are usually brown in colour, they also come in a wide array of colours that can include green, brown and purple, but generally with a degree of black, brown or grey markings.
Identification
This variability in colouration and markings means that accurate identification of grasshopper species can require careful examination of the specific shapes and markings of particular body parts. The common field grasshopper can be identified by having a long and angular looking pronotum (the frontmost section of the animal’s thorax) with triangular black markings that don’t quite reach all the way to its back edge.
It also has relatively few ‘stridulatory’ spines on its hind legs (these being the protrusions on the legs that, when rubbed against toughened veins on the forewings, allow the grasshopper to produce its characteristic song).
They are one of the strongest flying grasshoppers we have in this country and are particularly active in warm weather, their preferred habitats being dry and grassy, and they are most common on roadside verges, field margins and waste ground where on sunny days they can often be seen sunbathing on walls, patches of bare soil or on paths.
Their familiar and evocative song consists of a series of chirps, each being around half a second long, males will chirp at each other in turn, a bit like DJs battling, this sonic rivalry is characteristic of the species as is a ‘ticking’ sound they also produce during courtship.
Breeding
During the summer the female grasshopper will lay a large clutch of eggs, consisting of up to 15, just below the surface of dry ground or inside anthills, they will stay there over winter before hatching the following May.
Grasshoppers go through a development cycle which is known as ‘incomplete metamorphosis’, in which the larval stages of the insect, known as ‘nymphs’ tend to resemble miniature, wingless versions of the adults. These nymphs will go through a series of moults and eventually they reach their winged, sexually mature, adult form around about June.
Once Common Field Grasshoppers have mated and laid their eggs the adults, which are unable to survive the winter, will die off, this species, however, is better at surviving cold conditions than most other grasshopper species so it’s not unusual for them to survive all the way into December before they finally succumb to the colder weather.
On the Grasshopper and Cricket
John Keats (1795-1821)
The poetry of earth is never dead,
when all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
and hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
from hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead,
that is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
in summer luxury,—he has never done
with his delights; for when tired out with fun
he rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never,
on a lone winter evening, when the frost
has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
the Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever
and seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
the Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
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(June 2024)
There are several thousand miles of closed railway lines around the British isles, many of which have been re-purposed as footpaths, bridle-ways and cycle-paths for the use of the public.
Many of these were closed in the decades since the ‘Beeching cuts’ of the 60’s, when the incumbent Chairman of the British Railways Board, Richard Beeching, signed a report which led to 5,000 miles of the UK’s rail network being shut down, mainly due to the vast cost of subsidising it at a time when road was rapidly replacing rail as the main way of transporting passengers and freight.
Railways, by their very nature, are mostly flat and rarely have any steep inclines or declines so lend themselves very well to foot, hoof and pedal-power, and they usually follow a more-or-less direct route between destinations, often through some of our most beautiful countryside, all this makes them enormously popular to everyone from horseback hackers to cycling commuters.
The tendency of these routes to be traffic-free is also appealing, especially for wheelchair and pushchair users, mobility scooter riders and parents with children on scooters, bikes and other wheeled contraptions.
One such route, known simply as ‘The Greenway’, runs straight through the Lancashire mill-town of Padiham and was constructed along the old route of the North Lancs Loop.
The North Lancs Loop
The North Lancs Loop, as it is known by rail historians, was one of the most expensive stretches of line built by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway company and proved a headache for planners trying to negotiate with landowners and pick a suitable route across the Calder valley between Great Harwood and Rose Grove near Burnley.
Construction began in April 1870 and the first passenger train left Padiham on September the 1st 1876 although through most of its lifespan, until the line’s official closure to passengers in 1964, the traffic was mainly freight rather than passenger.
The line had lost its scheduled passenger services 7 years earlier in December 1957, but was still regularly used by passengers until the summer of 1963 as an alternative route for summer traffic from Yorkshire and North East Lancashire to Blackpool which avoided the notorious bottleneck at Accrington, especially to provide services to Blackpool on the incredibly busy Wakes Weeks, even though by that time demolition of the stations had already been started.
The rail connection to Padiham Power Station, however, was retained for deliveries of coal until as late as 1993.
For more information about the History of the North Lancs Loop please click on the link for an excellent article by rail historian Andy Hunt.
The creation of Padiham’s Greenway
Work on designing Padiham Greenway began in December 2006 when a group of stakeholders, including local residents and representatives from Padiham Town Council, Burnley Borough Council and Lancashire County Council met to discuss the various options available for re-purposing the rail track which cuts across the town and had been derelict and rubbish-strewn since the mid 90s.
After deliberating and poring over several plans the panel chose a design which would form a linear park running through the centre of the town, provide a safe and inviting space for people to socialise and cater for a walkers and cyclists of all ages and abilities.
Planning permission for a change of use to a footpath, bridleway and cycleway had already been granted in April 2005 on condition that several provisions be met, these being related to landscaping, lighting and access, these conditions were met in November 2008.
From March that year the future site of the greenway had been extremely busy with groundwork being carried out including removing the track and clearing years-worth of rubbish and overgrown vegetation, which was completed by April.
In 2009 on the 29th of January major construction jobs entailing the removal of a footbridge at Pendle Street, the lowering of embankments, removal of the top foot or two of boundary walls to open the area up and last-but-not-least the laying of the tarmac path began. Of course these tasks took longer to complete but work proceeded smoothly and on target, being finished by December, the main contractor for this was a Skipton based firm called JN Bentley.
The Greenway now
The Greenway opened in 2010 and immediately proved a hit with everyone, quickly being adopted by local residents as a place to enjoy a short walk in the fresh air with the dog, play football with the kids or to safely teach them to ride their first bicycle. A 2k junior parkrun takes place every Sunday at 9:00am and this winter (2024) several trees were planted as part of an on-going tree planting programme by Burnley Bondholders.
Over the years it became familiar as a unique feature of Padiham that makes it different to other towns in the area, and as a resident of 8 years I can testify to how well respected and kept clean it is by the majority of people.
This became evident by the dismay displayed in June 2021 when the current owners of the Greenway, the sustainable transport charity Sustrans, had to close down the bridge over the river Calder after a routine inspection by engineers revealed that a support pier in the river was sinking (see photos)
The coal authority investigated the subsidence and found that coal mining, once a major industry in the area, was probably to blame, at the moment this investigation is still on-going and users of the greenway are having to divert around the bridge to reach Memorial park on the other side.
In Parts Two and Three I’ll look at some of the features and sights of the Greenway, its possible future connection with the line at Simonstone which would carry it over Martholme viaduct and onto the town of Great Harwood, some of the contemporary issues it faces such as vandalism and misuse and the flora and fauna that can be spotted along the verges of this verdant and valued stretch of reclaimed railway.
For now though I hope you like this little video of our 3-legged terrier Ethel enjoying a ride along the Greenway in my father-in-law’s mobility scooter;
All photos and videos by author or from Padiham Archives,
(June, 2024)
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Meadow Cranesbill, Geranium pratense, is a perennial wildflower of the British countryside and is in bloom from June to August, its scientific name pratense means ‘of the meadow’ but it is often found on roadside verges, embankments and hedgerows too.
Its nectar-rich flowers make it an important and popular plant for many species of pollinating insects, including butterflies, moths, hoverflies and bumblebees. They are usually lilac blue in colour, but paler blues, darker blues, pinks, and even whites can be found, depending on the soil conditions, with Calcareous soils, like the Limestone soils of parts of Northern England, tending to produce a rich blue.
Appearance
The flowers are one of the largest of any native plant to be found in the British countryside, at about 4cm across, and despite being fragile in appearance they are surprisingly robust, each has 5 rounded petals with fine white veins along their length and fade to white towards the centre.
The stamens of the flowers have deep purple anthers which stand out on white filaments, and the central pistil forms a beak like protrusion as it begins to fruit, this resembles a cranes’ bill, which gives the plant its common name and the name of its genus; Geranium, which comes from the Greek noun geranos, meaning Crane. This bill, or beak springs open when mature firing the seeds all around like a blunderbuss, thus helping the plant spread.
Meadow Cranesbill grows in clumps and patches up to a metre tall that are covered in divided leaves and dotted with flowers, the leaves spreading out like a rosette to around 6 cm in diameter and tapered with large teeth, each leaf having 5 to 7 lobes. It is an easily identifiable wildflower and a pleasure to find when out-and-about in the countryside, being a hardy species, tolerant of prolonged periods of cold weather it can also be found long after other species have died back.
Uses
Meadow Cranesbill can been used to treat a wide variety of ailments and diseases, including cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, haemorrhoids, nosebleeds and ulcers, it can also be used to staunch bleeding wounds. Recently agricultural scientists discovered that an extract from the root of the plant has antimicrobial properties and is effective for preventing of potato scab.
The plant, which has many colloquial but now little-used names around the country including ‘Jingling Johnny’, ‘blue basins’, ‘grace of God’ and ‘Loving Andrews’ is heavily rooted in our folklore, being associated with fairies, sprites and other eldritch entities whose attentions can be warded off by wearing one of its blooms as protection, although it is said that plucking one of its flowers may incur a thunderstorm, so it’s maybe best not to!
Morning on the Meadows, by Maureen Fenton
Morning on the meadows
There’s haze on the hills as morning light
lays lines across the sky.
Among the slowly-waking buttercups,
straggle-fleeced sheep stand to graze.
From the second field, warming air now brings
a yeasty smell of drying hay. A curlew cries,
rises; the answering call speeds it on its way.
In the high woods a gamebird crakes. Beneath all
runs the whimpering swish of unseen stream.
By moss-stoned wall, red campion and nettles,
leafy crane’s-bill and tight-furled meadowsweet
compete to reach for sky. By the gate,
cow parsley outgrows them all.
The sun – a silver disc – burns through the veil,
turns the western sky white-tumbled blue,
sets the grass-green, sorrel-russet field aglow
with full-open cups of gold and purple puffs of clover
Then, a graceful ballet across the sky;
five swallows make it summer.
(From the Wildflower Way with Words)
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Otherwise known as the lady of the stream, the Grayling, Thymalus thymalus, is a freshwater fish native to the British isles and here in the northwest we’re lucky enough to have many rivers this beautiful fish deems pleasant enough to call home;
In Cumbria the rivers Eden and Derwent, the latter known as ‘the queen of fly-fishing rivers’, are perhaps its most famous haunts, in the Yorkshire Dales the Wharfe, Ure, Nidd, Ribble, Swale and, more familiar to the author, the rivers Brock, Calder, Conder, Hindburn, Hodder, Loud, Roeburn, Wenning, Wyre and their tributaries, which all originate on the Bowland fells are famous for their clear, clean waters and Grayling populations.
Held in high esteem
Held in high esteem by game fishers for their gracefulness but also for being one of the most challenging fish to catch, Grayling are also ‘bio-indicators’, indicative of the health of a river.
Feeding on freshwater invertebrates such as freshwater shrimps, Stonefly nymph, Mayfly nymphs and Caddis larvae, also small fish when they’re mature, their presence indicates that there are stable populations of their prey, which means their home is unpolluted and the water levels are constant, grayling themselves also have a very low tolerance for pollution.
In Bowland the river Hodder, so-named after an old Brythonic word for ‘peaceful’, that winds its way from its source on the high fells, past the villages of Slaidburn, Newton, Dunsop and Whitewell to its confluence with the Ribble is one of the strongholds of the grayling.
Flashing silver in the light
Kept in check by the dam at Stocks reservoir the water levels of the Hodder don’t fluctuate as wildly as other rivers in the area do, a certain level of water has to be maintained by law to prevent harming wildlife further down the river and violent spates caused by storms are prevented too, meaning shoals of grayling can be seen flashing silver in the light here when they are harder to spot elsewhere.
An abundance of this fish, identifiable by its prominent, spiny dorsal fin which can often appear red in mature males, also indicates that the water is not too silted up.
The main landowners here, the biggest being United Utilities and Duchy estates, are very careful about preventing any work they do from causing large amounts of silt to get into water courses, and they are closely monitored by bodies which represent game fishers, without whom there would be less pressure to keep the rivers the Grayling, Salmon and Trout live in clean.
Grayling, Trout and Crayfish
There is thought to be a link between increased numbers of Grayling, decreased numbers of Trout, and the presence of introduced and invasive Signal Crayfish in rivers. The theory, backed by research by the Ribble rivers trust, is that the Crayfish, which are aggressive, adept hunters and a threat to much of our native river species, including our native White-clawed crayfish, drive out Trout fry, that is baby Trout, from their hiding places where they can be snaffled up by waiting Grayling.
Permits and Day tickets
Permits and day tickets for some stretches of rivers in the Northwest can be bought from the Ribble Trust , Wyresdale anglers and Lancashire fly fishing association amongst other organisations.
I wind about, and in and out,
with here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,
Excerpt from The Brook, by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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The famous British novelist and journalist Sebastian Faulks once said, “If I could eat only one thing for the rest of my life, it would be rhubarb fool, which I would make with ginger and a hint of elderflower cordial”.
Now that the hedgerows are white with the delicately formed and scented flowers of the Elderflower this is the best time to pick them to make you own Elderflower cordial, which is as perfect and refreshing a drink as you could imagine for a flaming June evening and also an eminently useful ingredient for adding to desserts such as rhubarb fool to add a uniquely floral hint that nothing else can quite match.
Where and when to pick
The best time to pick Elderflowers is to wait until the blooms are full and creamy in colour, you can tell when they are ripe by their heady, sweet scent, which is particularly potent in the late evening.
Avoid picking any from beside a busy road as they will pick up pollution, (unless you desire a hint of diesel exhaust to your summer drinks that is!), also pick from higher up to avoid any contamination by dogs.
As with any foraging please don’t pick all the flowers, leave some for the insects and to develop into berries for later in the year.
This recipe is for around 2 litres and will take about 24 hours to be ready.
Ingredients
20 to 25 Elderflower blooms or heads
3 Lemons and 1 Orange, all unwaxed
1 kg of granulated sugar
1.5 litres of boiling water
(Optional but recommended) 1 teaspoon of citric acid
Method
First thoroughly shake the Elderflowers to get rid of any insects or detritus, then place them in a large Pyrex or similar bowl.
Next grate the zest from the Lemons and Oranges, saving about 125 to 150ml of juice, and thinly slice.
Place the zest and sliced citrus fruit into the bowl with the Elderflowers and cover with boiling water, then cover the bowl with a plate and leave for 24 hours to infuse.
After 24 hours strain the mixture through a muslin cloth (coffee filter paper will do the job just as well) into a saucepan and then add the Lemon and Orange juice, citric acid and sugar.
Bring this liquid to a simmer, stirring constantly all the time until all of the sugar has dissolved, then pour into sterilised bottles and seal.
For best results serve Elderflower cordial chilled, I always like to serve it with a premium sparkling water like San Pelegrino and nice clear ice-cubes made from boiled water so as to best appreciate it, it’s very versatile though so you can make cocktails, G&Ts or whatever else you want with it, of course it can be used in classic recipes such as that for rhubarb fool too, whatever you use it for I hope you enjoy it, why not let us know your favourite uses and recipes?
Brown thatch and gardens blooming with lily and with rose,
And the cool shining river so pleasant where he flows,
Wide fields of oats and barley, and elderflower like foam,
And the sky gold with sunset, and the horses going home!
From Homeward by Cicely Fox Smith
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So far this year we haven’t really been blessed with that many cloudless nights but the few we have had did provide us with some opportunities to espy spectacular night-sky phenomena such as the Aurora borealis a few weeks ago. That display was an absolute boon for photographers and astronomers, especially those who combine the two in the increasingly trendy art of astrophotography.
This fascinating field of photography really took off during the Covid lockdown when the lack of plane contrails and decrease in overall air pollution, added to the fact that lots of people suddenly found themselves with plenty of spare time, meant that a lot of already creative people found themselves taking an interest in the night sky.
The happy result has been that there are now so many excellent photos of sunsets, eclipses, lunar craters, Saturn’s rings and other night sky phenomena that it’s hard to pick a favourite.
In this article however I’ll write about a more remarkable astrological occurrence that’s really piqued the interest of astronomers and meteorologists, backyard or otherwise; that of the mysterious luminous nocturnal spectres known as noctilucent clouds.
Gleaming diaphanous clouds
Many decades ago, a Swedish meteorologist recounted something he experienced when out on a field trip:
“In 1954 I was one of a group of young people studying the growth of shower clouds in the long summer days of central Sweden. One evening our routine was broken by a dinner party, it was nearly midnight, but still only dusk, when we strolled back to our quarters. We were startled to see, low in the northern sky, a skein of diaphanous clouds gleaming with a pale silvery light.
They were like a worn cirrus, but with less substance and more remote mysterious luminous night clouds. Henceforth our working day extended into the small hours of the next morning as we sought the clouds again and again, sometimes with quite captivating reward.”
The “mysterious luminous night clouds” that he and his colleagues had witnessed were the atmospheric phenomenon of ‘noctilucent’ (meaning ‘night shining’ in Latin) clouds, these are very different in appearance and composition to ordinary clouds, being silvery white in appearance with a bluish tinge, and only, if rarely, seen during the summer months near the northern horizon after the sun has set.
Only seen at twilight
Noctilucent, or polar mesospheric, clouds are nothing to do with the high, whispy clouds that we are used to seeing in the summer sky’s in the daytime; cirrus, which form at 16,000 to 50,000 ft or 3 to 9 miles (modern airliners fly at 33,000 and 42,000 feet, or between about six and nearly eight miles above sea level).
They are so tenuous in nature that they are not seen during daylight because the sun just shines right through them and they can only be seen at twilight, when the sun is between six and sixteen degrees below the horizon. In such circumstances, they are sunlit because of their great height, while the atmosphere below them, and any ground based observers, are shrouded in darkness.
They can be distinguished from the familiar cirrus clouds by the fact that they are not tinted by the usual red glow of sunset, they also stand out brightly against this afterglow in contrast to clouds at lower levels which, being in shadow, appear dark in colour.
Controversial Clouds
Noctilucent clouds were officially recorded for the first time about 139 years ago in 1885, and it is a matter of some controversy as to whether this late discovery was because nobody had ever commented on them before, or simply because they were not there to see.
Proponents of the former theory argue that in 1885 the sky was being very closely watched around the world because of spectacular sunsets associated with the recent eruption of Krakatoa in the East Indies in 1883, and that this therefore may have led to the discovery of something previously unnoticed (by science anyway).
Others argue, however, that noctilucent clouds are more of a modern day phenomenon, and in recent years northern summertime noctilucent clouds have set records for low latitude sightings. In 2019, for example, they were reported as far south as Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
The formation of these clouds depends on the presence of significant amounts of water vapour at high levels in the atmosphere, in a level called the mesosphere which is about 30 to 50 miles up. Data collected by NASA satellites demonstrated that 2021, a particularly good year for sightings, had so far been the wettest year since 2007, and this summer may be even wetter, (and better for sightings) due to the millions of tonnes of water thrown into the Stratosphere by 2022’s Hunga Tonga eruption. (as can be seen with both Krakatoa and Hunga Tonga it takes roughly 2 years until the atmospheric effects of a large volcanic eruption start being noticed around the world)
As well as being volcanic in origin water vapour at these heights has been shown to be a byproduct of the breakdown of methane, and levels of methane, (the most damaging ‘greenhouse’ gas in terms of global warming), in the atmosphere have been steadily increasing since the start of the industrial era. Some scientists believe, therefore, that this increasing abundance of methane may well be the reason why noctilucent clouds appear to be more common nowadays.
If you want to know when noctilucent clouds are visible near you, or just want to look at pictures of them, there are several groups which report them, on Twitter there is #NCLnow, on Facebook noctilucent clouds around the world and on Reddit there is r/atoptics, of course this is just a selection and there are many other groups out there dedicated to this beautiful and ephemeral phenomenon.
A B-H
(June 2024)
The Large Heath Butterfly, Coenonympha tullia, also known as the Common Ringlet and, locally, as the Manchester Argus, is mainly found in wet boggy moorland areas of northern England and Scotland, with a few isolated colonies in Ireland, Wales and Southern England.
They can be found at a few spots in the Northwest; Winmarleigh near Preston, Heysham Moss, where they were re-introduced in 2013, a few scattered locations on the North Yorkshire moors, Foulshaw moss near Milnthorpe in Cumbria, at a couple of sites in the Forest of Bowland and on the Manchester mosses.
Under close observation at the moment due to their vulnerability and status as an indicator species they are on the wing from around June to August and have an erratic flying pattern, flitting low on the moors between the rushy tussocks and clumps of heather.
Identification
This medium-sized butterfly can be very hard to identify, and at first glance can be mistaken for a Meadow Brown or Ringlet, but there are several ways to differentiate it, one is that it always rests with its wings closed, and unlike other butterflies can be seen flying in overcast weather, as long as the ambient air temperature is above 14°C.
Its wingspan is about 3 to 4 cm and they have irregularly-shaped white streaks on the underside of their wings, with 2 to 6 distinct ringed eyespots on the underside of their hindwings. The number and size of these eyespots are one of the things that makes identification difficult and it has been found that there is a strong correlation between the number and size of spots on different forms of the Large Heath and the total of sunshine hours in June and July, when the adults are about and flying.
This has found to be because in summers with more hours of sunshine, or in warmer, southern parts of the country, the adults are much more active and fly more frequently, and this makes them more obvious to attacks by predatory birds, in particular Meadow Pipits, which are also frequently found in the same moorland habitats.
The presence of wing spots in such a situation means that the attacking bird will focus its attention on the eyespots, rather than the body of the insect, therefore, evolutionary process being what it is, this means that these butterflies are more likely to escape being eaten and pass on their genes.
In cooler areas, however, Large Heaths will spend more time perching on the ground or vegetation, so it is advantageous for them to be less, rather than more, conspicuous. So those individuals with less or no spots are more likely to survive. In the north of England there is a happy balance between avoidance and concealment, so there is more of a variation in the appearance of the species here.
Habitat
As the Large Heath is a specialist and very specific to a particular habitat, and doesn’t tend to stray far from its home colony, only up to about 600m, it is classed an an ‘indicator species’, used as an indication of whether there is an improvement or deterioration in the nominal, preferred state of the habitat it is usually found in.
Colonies can be very large, numbering up to 15,000 adults although the majority are much smaller, but these are only found wherever it’s main food plant; Hare’s-tail Cottongrass Eriophorum vaginatum grows, although larvae have occasionally been found on Common Cottongrass, Eriophorum angustifolium, and Jointed Rush, Juncus articulatus, all of which prefer wet, boggy, nutrient poor soils.
The main food source for adult Large Heath butterflies is the nectar of the flowers of Cross-leaved heather, Erica tetralix, and colonies are most often found where the base vegetation layer consists mostly of Sphagnum moss. Larvae also require tussocks of rushes to retreat to in case of predation and if an area is too heavily grazed or burnt, leading to the loss of these tussocks, this can cause the numbers of a colony to drop.
In areas where peatland restoration methods are underway, such as flooding of previously dry areas of moorland, colonies of larval Heath butterflies can be harmed or killed by inundation so it is vital for surveys of indicator species such as the Large Heath to be made prior to such projects being given the go ahead, so as to make sure these projects won’t cause more harm than good to the area.
Lifecycle
The Large Heath lays its eggs singly on the foodplant, preferring dead leaves at the base of thick tussocks. The larvae feed in the daytime from around July to September, go through a period of hibernation overwinter, called a ‘diapause’, and then resume feeding again from March to May, retreating into the tussocks of grass when they are not feeding. Pupation occurs in late May or early June, with the pupae being suspended from the foodplant or nearby vegetation, and emerging as adults when the weather is suitable, but having the ability to suspend the process til the next season if it is not.
Successful reintroduction
Recently Chester Zoo successfully bred and released the Large Heath, locally known as the Manchester Argus, at several sites near Manchester, including Chat Moss on the Greater Manchester Peatlands, where it had been absent for over 150 years, and more reintroduction schemes are currently in the pipeline. Breeding and release is essential to increase numbers of C. tullia because its ability to naturally recolonise is so poor, but these schemes are proving successful so, thanks to their work, this beautiful butterfly’s future is looking very positive.
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Northwest Nature and History