20
provenance of a Continental-race swallowtail
at Dunton Plotlands turned out, however, to be
a local school. Few other butterfly records of
note came in, apart from good numbers of
grizzled skippers at sites in the south of the
county, and a slight improvement in the
fortunes of the wall.
On 1st March, a quarter of a million people
descended on London for a Countryside
Rally. Although this purported to raise
awareness of countryside problems, it ignored
the wildlife issues, and was hijacked by
interest groups opposed to proposed
Government action on blood sports and the
'right to roam'. The chance to promote the
integration of rural policy7 and biodiversity
conservation was lost. Towards the end of
March, a welcome announcement came from
Government of the addition of several species
of animal and plant to the protected lists,
Schedules 5 and 8 of the Wildlife &
Countryside Act. Those of most relevance to
Essex were Fisher's estuarine moth and
Deptford pink (now fully protected); water
vole (giving protection to its places of shelter);
stag beetle (prohibiting trade); and bluebell
(prohibiting trade in wild plants and bulbs).
A long-running dispute over High Wood,
Great Dunmow concluded with an
arbitrator's ruling that payments to the owner
for not having a deer farm on the site should
be significantly reduced. This was welcome
support for English Nature's recent policy that
payments to protect our wildlife should be
made on the basis of securing positive
management, rather than compensation for not
damaging an important site.
Summer
The hopes in May of recovery from severe
weather were rather dashed in June, which
can perhaps best be described as rain and more
rain. It did however go some way towards
restoring previously-depleted groundwater
levels. It also triggered massive, even
excessive, grass growth, such that many of our
herb-rich grasslands appeared superficially to
have lost their herb component. Moth trap
catches were lamentably low. although many
trappers did report large numbers of hawk
moths. Privet hawks were especially
abundant, so much so that immigration was
suggested as a likely source. One of the most
surprising moth records of the year came from
Jon Young at Jaywick, in the form of a three-
humped prominent, one of two in the UK in
1998, the eighth British record, and the first in
Essex for 156 years.
And during breaks in the rain, other surveyors
were out and about. Peter Harvey discovered a
female Bombylius discolor at Star Lane Brick
Pit, Great Wakering, only the fifth Essex
record of this nationally-scarce bee-fly, and
the first since the 1960s. Also a fifth Essex
record was the hoverfly Volucella inflata at
Warwick Wood, Belhus Park. And continuing
his intrepid exploration of Thames-side.
Peter's investigation of the Barking PFA
lagoons produced a remarkable mix of 6 RDB
insects, including the tachinid fly Gymnosoma
nitens, together with the first county records
for the jumping spider Synageles venator and
the chrysid wasp Cleptes nitidulus. On the
botanical front, Ken Adams reported around a
thousand rough marsh-mallow plants and
night-flowering Catchfly at Arkesden Chalk
Pit. but sadly these were all herbicided a week
later.
The unsettled theme continued into July with a
series of windy Atlantic depressions crossing
the country, although delivering relatively
little rain to Essex. Not the sort of summer we
had been becoming accustomed to. Butterfly
flight periods were markedly affected, some
with extended, low-density seasons, others
severely truncated. Only the grass-feeding
browns seemed to be doing well, including
marbled white wliich continued its
consolidation and northward spread. The Stour
Wood white admirals had a reasonable year,
although a little down on 1997 levels. Migrant
moths performed poorly too, with all the usual
species scarce or absent - although there were
Essex Naturalist (New Series) 16 (1999)