13.10.26 Clouded Yellows
We are in mid October and the weather is mild. The monsoon rains have finally arrived in the newly arid desert of West Sussex but they are just heavy drizzle rather than real downpours so far. The garden generally remains very colourful as though plants are now rebounding after the parched weeks that seemed to go on and on.
As for the wildflower meadows, they have been cut hard, raked, and re-seeded for next year. I didn’t cut them until September because I felt they were better protected from drought by leaving the long vegetation in place. There was plenty of greenery visible at the base of the sward, whereas our ordinary lawns had turned a straw colour many weeks earlier.
There have been late flowers to enjoy and it has been a very good year for butterflies, and also the Humming-bird Hawk moth. We have had plenty of Gatekeepers, Common Blues, Red Admirals, Speckled Woods, and Small Skippers in and around the meadows. Also some Peacocks, Commas, and Painted Ladies.
We have seen many Clouded Yellows (Colias croceus) both on the Downs locally and in our garden this year. It is not a UK native but does always migrate here across the Channel in varying numbers. This one has been a “Clouded Yellow Year” as they say. The normal breeding areas are all around the Mediterranean fringes and extending through to Turkey and the Middle East. They breed continuously through the summer and may produce up to 3 generations per year.
The Clouded Yellow is easy to tell apart from the Brimstone, our other yellow U.K. butterfly, having a much more vivid orangey-yellow on the upper wing surface. This is seen as a flash of colour only when they fly because the wings are usually folded when at rest. It can arrive here from June onwards and be seen almost to November. The later summer sightings may be either immigrants or individuals hatched here because the early arrivals produce broods. It doesn’t survive the winter in the U.K. (yet!) and so sightings depend on the yearly extent of migration.
The food plants include Lucerne (Medicago sativa), various Clovers, and Bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus). We have the latter two in our meadows, but I notice that farmer’s fields nearby have grown a flowery mix with a lot of Lucerne (also known as Alfalfa) and Clovers. So there is plenty to attract the Clouded Yellows locally.
As a side note, the Lucerne fields were thriving and very green throughout the extreme summer drought and presumably this is why they were sown. They have a very deep tap root and are drought tolerant, amongst many other benefits as a crop.
I have been a bit disappointed not to see any Large Tortoiseshell (Nymphalis polychloros) butterflies yet around the garden or locally, as I understand they are migrating across the Channel in growing numbers each year. There have been many sightings along the South coast and even reports of breeding here in 2026. It went extinct in the U.K. in the second half of the last century but may be on the brink of a comeback with the warming climate.
My brother and I claim to have seen one while visiting Rudyard Kipling’s house – Bateman’s, in Burwash, East Sussex – back in the 1960s. However we were only little then, so it should probably be considered as “unconfirmed”!
Comments