Cumbria Naturally
  • Home
  • Blog
  • My Books
    • Cumbrian Contrasts
    • A Lakeland Experience >
      • Introduction
      • Derwent
      • Langdale
      • Ullswater
      • Kentdale
    • About Scout Scar
    • Atlantic Odyssey
  • Other Writing
    • What Larks!
    • Further - Explore Shetland
    • Autumn Migration
    • Rydal and Nab Scar
    • Perspectives
    • The River Kent
    • Wings
  • Gallery
  • Contact

Silver Washed Fritillary, in the picture

21/7/2021

0 Comments

 
PictureSilver Washed Fritillary, at first glimpse
From the first, the morning was hot with scarcely a breath of air. The wood was calm  and still.  Only the call of a great-spotted woodpecker, the mew of a buzzard, the whine of hoverflies. Grasshoppers were silent, until the sun rose higher and  sunlight flowed into shady glades. Then the grasshopper  chorus began  Tall grasses and flowers were drenched in refreshing dew that brushed  our bare ankles and made  cobwebs visible   Here was a  morning of sensuousness. 

Micro-moths flitted through  grasses.  The low sun highlighted thick stems of ivy snaking up the trunks of trees.  Honeysuckle wound around and around branches.  The light blazed and  bleached colour from vegetation.  Sunlit flowers rose translucent  against deep pools of shadow created by the trees.
We walked a transitional zone - the spring-line at the foot of the limestone escarpment where the peat mosses begin, where the ground is soft and damp despite the heat-wave.  The stony bed of the beck is dry but I know where to find water.   We have breakfast seated on the stone parapet of a bridge over the catchwater, created at the time of Enclosure to drain the Lyth Valley, to divert water from the fells and channel it out to Morecambe Bay.  The catchwater is overhung with meadowsweet and Greater Willow herb known as codlins and cream..  Still as a statue, a heron sits on a post seeking  prey. 
By 9.30 am the rising sun begins to dispel the woodland shadows.  And the first  butterflies are abroad,  meadow browns, ringlets and whites.   A glimpse of a large butterfly,  the Silver  Washed Fritillary of my quest patrols the shady woodland fringe. in rapid flight.  A beauty settles sunlit on a flower,   gone in an instant but the  image  will live on in my mind's eye.  
Once again, I am immersed in the  Silver Washed Fritillary experience.  They fly out of the shadows, over bracken and brambles, close to my face but rarely settling.  Now one alights in bracken and here's a chance.  No time to check through binoculars, I take the picture - wide angle to be sure I have it. Then I zoom in.  Until I'm home I shall not know for sure what the image shows.
Last time we came here rather later in the morning, so the light falls  differently through the wood and the sunlit glade where I suggest we linger is  in partial shade.  No matter,  a large bright butterfly flies over our heads and alights  on meadow sweet.  The light dazzles, takes out colour.  My video works better, but even so the light is too strong.   
On our return, we walk uphill in full sun then stop for a drink overlooking the Lyth Valley.  There's a trickle of water in the beck and a water-course through the pasture is muddy.  Rain will be most welcome.  The bramble bush where I'd hoped for one last photo-opportunity is frazzled.   In days of extreme heat it has quickly flowered and set seed.  How precarious the brief life of a butterfly when its nectar source is so soon over and done. 
 I'm not done yet. That blade of grass shows an authentic image but I hope for better.  ' Not obsessive,  you're a perfectionist' says my friend.  We speak of Lady Eleanor Glanville of Lincolnshire and of Tickenham Court, Somerset. An entomologist   for whom the Glanville Fritillary is named.  Amongst fritillaries in Witherslack Woods last Sunday, one of the men told her story.  Estranged from her husband, she dedicated her life  to the study of butterflies at a time when science was considered the preserve of men.   Lady Eleanor Glanville, 1654-1709.   She was born toward the end of the Civil War, then in 1660 came  in the Restoration. Turbulent times. She   was a contemporary of  John Milton.  And of John Evelyn who was commissioned by King Charles II to report on the loss of oak woodland, consequent on the felling of oak to build warships for the English navy.  There was habitat loss and species loss in the 17ty century but  nothing like the catastrophic   scale and pace we experience now in 21st century, and  globally.  I reflect with longing on the abundance Lady Eleanor would have known. 
How did a woman in the 17th century go about the study of butterflies with none of the optics we all have to hand?  How did she delve the life cycle of the fritillary?  I'd love to see the records she made, the correspondence she shared on her observations.  Here's a link to the life of Lady Eleanor and her home at Tichenham Court.

                   
https://www.historichousesfoundation.org.uk/tickenham-court​ ​ 

​Lady Eleanor Glanville has several new  admirers.   From the gentleman in Witherslack Woods, I share her with my friends.  I love the way moments in our personal histories ricochet, with  surprise illumination, interweaving  with the lives and passions of others, back and forth through time.  I know Tickenham Court where Lady Eleanor died.  If only we might revisit the data-base of memory, search our experience for something overlooked when our focus might have been elsewhere.  If only we could pinpoint and retrieve what then we saw and bring it clearly into focus.   

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

    Jan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books)

    Archives

    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    November 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    April 2010
    January 2010
    November 2009
    January 2009
    January 2004

    Categories

    All
    A Local Patch
    Birdlife
    Butterflies And Moths
    Flowers
    Locations
    Views
    Walks
    Weather
    WIldlife

    RSS Feed

Website
Home
Blog
Gallery
Contact



​Cookie Policy
My Books
  • Intro - My books
  • ​Cumbrian Contrasts
  • A Lakeland Experience
  • About Scout Scar
  • Atlantic Odyssey
    ​
Other Writing
  • Intro - Other Writing
  • What Larks!
  • Further - Explore Shetland
  • Autumn Migration
  • Rydal and Nab Scar
  • Perspectives
  • The River Kent
  • Wings
Jan Wiltshire - Cumbria Naturally
© Jan Wiltshire 2022 All rights reserved
Website by Treble3