Go west and follow the skipper

The chequered skipper butterfly is very rare. But your chances of seeing one improve in the Fort William area. Graham Holliday reports

The small chequered skipper butterfly is one of Britain's rarer butterflies.

Numbers took a steep dive in the 1960s and the species finally became extinct from the damp woodlands of the English Midlands in 1975.

It was discovered in Scotland in 1942. This dark brown and yellow butterfly with a distinctive, darting flight pattern is now confined to western Scotland. Butterfly Conservation, a registered charity set up in 1968, has since discovered 50 colonies in the Fort William area and along the west coast.

One of those colonies can be found at Doire Donn, a Scottish Wildlife Trust reserve. Doire Donn is a small remnant of Scotland's temperate rainforest situated five miles from Fort William at the north-western end of Loch Linnhe.

It forms part of the Coneglen Estate. It's dominated by sessile oak, birch and an abundance of ash, alder, wych elm and Scots pine. The upper slopes are filled with the wet grassland and purple moor grass much favoured by the butterflies.

“The butterfly loves woodland edges on acid soils where the food of the caterpillars is found in the purple moor grass and where sunshine keeps the temperature up and where nectar plants for the adults are also present,” says Mark Foxwell, conservation manager at Doire Donn which is also home to the rare deadwood beetle.

The skipper, as it is commonly known, feeds predominantly on bugle, bluebells, orchids, and lousewort.

The caterpillar is slow to develop taking over 100 days and becomes mature during ...

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• By : Graham Holiday
• In : Wildlife
• Issue : 19
• Page : 22
• Words : 966