Wall Browns - 3rd generation in Suffolk

[Neil Jones]

In message <343FF3D9.7CE7 at gate.net> viceroy at GATE.NET writes:
> 
> Are people spraying the roadsides and hedgerows with herbicides to keep 
> down weeds? We've lost a lot of stuff that way.
> According to Dr. Norman Hickin, who wrote a nice fat little book about 
> Irish butterflies  (and No Moths!) it uses Poa annua, an annual meadow 
> grass ... I wonder if the pasture grasses being planted have crowded out 
> this nice little grass. 

I would advocate caution about the information given in British books about
the precise grasses used by Satyrids. I have just been through my books
and found variable information. The problem is that information has tended to get
Copied from older publications. Some of the less authoritative books do list
Poa annua but those which appear to base their information on direct observation
do not.
Jeremy Thomas in the Butterflies of Britain and Ireland  says, 
"Walls lay in very dry spots and exclisively select grass that has an exposed
vertical edge. In practice, this occurs in three distinct sitiuations . One is
where the ground has broken away benath the tuft to form a miniature cliff;
hoofprints, rabbit holes, and places where the soil has slipped along banks,
sheepwalks and path edges, all are typical examples. The spherical white eggs
are often laid solely along the upper edges of pathways on downs that otherwise
have a smooth and uniform sward, making the remarkable easy to find.
  The othr two places chosen for egg-laying are the sides of large, isolated
tussocks of wild grasses, such as cock's foot (Dactylis glomerata) and the
beautiful wacy hair-grass (Deschampsia flexuosa), and where bentssuch as
common bent (Agrosits tenuis) and black bent (a gigantea), or the downy blades
of Yorkshire fog(Holcus lanatus), form a wall of tall grass-stems
beneath fences and under the edges of shrubs."

He goes on to say, "Tor (Brachypodium pinnatum) and wood false brome 
(B. sylvaticum) are favourites, in addtion to those mentioned."

He attributes periodic declines to wet summers.

> He has a range map showing the wall brown's distribution in Ireland. 
> Widely distributed, often abundant. Three broods in a good year. 
> Folks in my part are too impoverished to spray, so far. Any minute now, 
> though, the Eurodollars will fix that. They've already caused people to 
> overgraze their pastures with their pernicious headage. (A subsidy for 
> growing sheep.) No rules about how many per acre, so the canny farmers 
> just bought quantities, shoved them all out there and let them die in 
> the winter. amazing.

We have too many sheep here in Wales to. These "Woolly Locusts" often
prevent proper woodland regeneration.

> They've changed that rule, anyway. 

I wish they would change some of the others . We've had several examples
of problems with the flax growing subsidy recently. In one case the habitat
being detstroyed was actually listed under the European Habitats Directive,
It had Marsh Fritillaries (Eurodryas= Euphyryas aurinia) on it.
The other example was the infamous "Farmer Harmer" incident on the Chalk 
Downland south of London. Where a farmer called Justin Harmer (A very
appropriate name) decided to (legally) plough up a Site of Special Scientific
Interest (a rather weak British Legal protection designation).
The site had the rare Adonis Blue (Lysandra Bellargus) on it.
Farmer Harmer's plans went wrong because some people went and sat
in front of his tractor, and because he had chosen to do it in the middle
of a general election campaign. It was quite big news and the Secretary of
State for the Environment was forced to issue a special order to stop the work. 

The head if English Nature,The government's conservation body for England.
Derek Langslow is quoted as saying,
"It is just such a pity that we have to have direct action taken on an 
SSSI before the powers that be move." 

NOTE: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different government conservation bodies



-- 
Neil Jones- Neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk "The beauty and genius of a work of art
may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a
vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last
individual of a race of living things breathes no more another heaven and
another earth must pass before such a one can be again." William Beebe