Saving the skipper
Val explains how a project aims to save 20 species from extinction, including the chequered skipper butterfly
IN November 2017, a lottery-funded Back from the Brink campaign was launched at Windsor Castle in Berkshire to rescue species on their way to extinction. The programme, which is being run by Natural England, involves seven wildlife charities and six conservation organisations. They’re pooling their expertise and resources, and they aim to save 20 species from fading away. The scheme, which is funded by The National Lottery, is likely to have wider benefits and improve the habitat for roughly
200 species across Britain.
One of the chosen 20 species is a butterfly called the chequered skipper
(Carterocephalus palaemon). This golden-spotted brown butterfly became extinct in England in 1976, although it still flies in western Scotland. Its food plant is a grass called false brome
(Brachypodium sylvaticum), and Rockingham Forest in Northamptonshire has already received some Belgian-bred chequered skippers. These caterpillars feed on false brome and there’s plenty of it nearby.
The butterflies will be released over a three-year period and eventually it’s hoped that skippers will breed in the forest. The project will also encourage the willow tit, lesser spotted woodpecker and barbastelle bat.
I’ve never seen a chequered skipper, but they used to be found in woodlands and limestone grassland from Oxfordshire to Lincolnshire, and in Cambridgeshire. I’m unlikely to see one in my Gloucestershire garden.
However, I do see other skippers here and I always think that these fast-flying butterflies can’t make up their mind whether they’re butterflies or moths. Their wings seem almost hinged.
There are eight skipper species in the British Isles and three different skippers have visited Spring Cottage. We see the small skipper and the large skipper, mostly in June or July but sometimes into August as well. These two butterflies are very alike, but the large skipper has chequered markings that are absent on the small skipper.
One of the reasons we’re successful with skippers is that we have areas of long grass. We don’t mow everything, just the grass nearest the cottage. The skippers arrive in high summer as small glints of gold rushing around. The small skipper appears later than the large skipper in our garden and both hug the ground. I love butterfly expert Matthew Oates’ description of the large skipper as a ‘Harrier jump jet in character’.
Longer grass encourages some skippers and brown butterflies because they lay their eggs on grasses. The small skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris) is said to prefer Yorkshire fog grass (Holcus lanatus), but also lays eggs on several other grasses. The large skipper (Ochlodes Sylvanus) uses many wide-leaved grasses and rushes.
We’ve also planted limestone flowers and the dingy skipper (Erynnis tages) has been seen here because we grow its main food plant, the common bird’s-foot-trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).
“They aim to save 20 species from fading away”