survival on regenerating elm suckers is limited, and the species may decline further; but its present
status is surprisingly good in view of the disaster that has affected the elms.
The purple Hairstreak seems well established and quite widespread in areas where mature
oaks are present.
The three lycaenid species included here share another common feature: the adults seem only
rarely to feed on nectar from flowers and are assumed to rely much more on honeydew (aphid excre-
ment) in the high canopy of trees (Heath et al). This has two consequences: the butterflies stay high in
the canopy and can easily escape detection and they will not have been so affected by the decline in the
abundance of nectar producing flowers in intensively farmed areas and darker, uncoppiced. woods. In
contrast, the brimstone is exceptionally long-lived in the adult stage and feeds extensively from
flowers along hedgerows and woodland edges wandering widely as it does so. These are habitats
where flowers are still abundant and it also ensures that no-one fails to notice even quite small num-
bers of these brilliant yellow butterflies.
Common and widespread residents
There are sixteen species in this category. They can be found virtually all over the county and some
species have even increased in abundance and distribution in recent decades. Although there are
sixteen species they fall into only three ecological groupings: nettle-feeding vanessids, Crucifer- feed-
ing pierids and grass-feeding satyrids and hesperiids.
The small tortoiseshell has always been recognised as a common species as, to a lesser extent, has
the peacock. The comma was noted as rare and probably extinct by Fitch (1891). Fitch implied that
this was due to the loss of the larval foodplant (then believed to be hop). It spread back into Essex in
the 1930s when many other woodland species also expanded their ranges (Heath et al). It is much
more a woodland species than the other vanessids. Its larval foodplants include elm suckers as well as
the more usual nettle. Hop is nowadays an unusual foodplant.
Large whites and small whites are abundant pests of garden cabbage patches and the adults of both
species disperse widely and are reinforced by immigrants from abroad. The green-veined white and
orange-tip are roadside species in Essex, almost entirely dependent on garlic mustard and hedge
mustard which are common on roadside verges under the present pattern of verge management. Both
species also feed on cuckoo-flowers on wet pastures - but the decline of this habitat has not caused a
corresponding decline in these butterflies. The orange-tip seems to have shown some increase in
recent years.
Two satyrids have undergone distinct increases in range and abundance in the last 20 years, these
are the speckled wood and the gatekeeper. The speckled wood was common in most woods in Vic-
torian times (Fitch, 1891). Its population changes seem to be a precise opposite of what has happened
to the woodland fritillaries. It disappeared from Essex early this century and was not seen again until
the 1950s when it recolonised the south-east and has been spreading north ever since. Only the north-
west has yet to be recolonised. Heath et al. explain the recent increase as being due to the species pre-
ference for rather shady woods: so lack of coppicing has been beneficial in this case. Davis (1978)
reported the way in which the males show territorial defence of sunlit patches in otherwise dark
woods. The defence behaviour is directed against other speckled woods - but I am tempted to wonder
whether the decline of other woodland buterflies that may also compete for sun-patches, has benefit-
ted the speckled wood.
The recent increase in the gatekeeper has been less spectacular than the recolonisation by the spec-
kled wood. The former has always been a common species in most of the county. However, it was
absent from the southern parts of Epping Forest in the 1950s and 1960s (Corke, 1968). Its recent
spread has largely filled these gaps and in the arable countryside gatekeepers have become the most
common butterfly along the field edges and remaining hedgerows.
The other common satyrids (wall, meadow brown, ringlet, small heath) and hesperiids (small.
Essex and large skippers) are still as widespread as ever they were. They are no longer a common fea-
ture of hay meadows because hay meadows have become rare, but they remain common on rough
grassland, wide roadside verges and cuttings and the wide rides in woodlands (especially the very wide
rides in conifer woodlands).
20