Country diary: a butterfly boom out of the barren land

[Judi Lynn]

Crook, County Durham: Fast-forward half a century and few casual visitors would suspect that this was once a scene of industrial dereliction

Phil Gates
@WeardaleDiary
Thu 4 Oct 2018 00.30 EDT

Local people with a long memory can recall the time when this small woodland was Roddymoor colliery waste heap. In 1968 the mountain of rock was regraded to blend with the gently undulating farmland. Grass was sown and Newcastle University ecologists began an experimental project to test the feasibility of reforesting it, planting 45 species of trees and shrubs in the barren, acid, stony substrate.

Fast-forward half a century and few casual visitors would suspect that this was once a scene of industrial dereliction. Dig an inch or two below the leaf litter and you’ll find coal shale, but survivors from the original plantings are now lofty trees, with sheltered glades that are a haven for butterflies.

As I rounded a bend in the footpath I could smell Japanese rose (Rosa rugosa), its teacup-sized blooms the last roses of summer, saturating the autumn air with intense fragrance. But it was its ripe fruits, as big as cherries, some pecked open by bullfinches in search of the hard seeds inside, that were the big attraction here. The scarlet hips were gently decaying in the sunshine, oozing juice that attracted swarms of butterflies, mostly commas (Polygonia c-album) and speckled woods (Pararge aegeria).

Twenty years ago, both were rare vagrants in north-east England. My late entomologist friend Tom Dunn, writing in 1986 in The Moths and Butterflies of Northumberland and Durham, lamented the steep decline of commas in the region over the 20th century. Of the speckled wood he wrote: “We now consider it to be extinct in our two counties”, adding with wistful optimism that “it is theoretically possible for it to return”.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/04/country-diary-a-butterfly-boom-out-of-the-barren-land