KENT & SOUTH EAST LONDON BRANCH NEWSLETTER The Adonis ISSUE 93 | AUTUMN 2019 Contents Chair’s Welcome p.4 Regional Conservation Manager’s Report p.6 Highlights of the 2019 Butterfly Season p.8 Are our landscapes joined-up? p.9 A Lime Hawk-moth Small Blue in London Cover Story: The Duke of Burgundy p.10 Long-term farm-based conservation work p.14 Wild About Gardens p.16 2019/2020 Conservation Work Party Dates p.18 Black-veined moth Kent members taking part in the Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey p.20 in the Crundale Valley Big Butterfly Count Committee Members p.21 Field Trip Reports p.22 White Hill and Fackenden Down • Abbots Wood • Crundale Valley • Strawberry Banks and Coney Banks Arable reversion wildflower meadow • East Blean • Burnt Oak Wood Follow us and keep in touch: • Lullingstone Websites: www.kentbutterflies.org / www.kentmothgroup.wordpress.org • Dene Park Woods • Langdon Cliffs, Dover @BCKentBranch / @mothsinkent • Steyning Rifle Range • White Hill Reserve, Shoreham Butterfly Conservation Kent & SE London Branch / Kent Moth Group Kent & SE London Branch AGM & Members Day Insert Kent Butterflies Butterfly Conservation. Company limited by guarantee, registered in England (2206468). Registered Office: Manor Yard, East Lulworth,Wareham, Please add Butterfly Conservation to your approved email addresses. Dorset, BH20 5QP. Charity registered in England and Wales(254937) and in Scotland (SCO39268). VAT No GB 991 2771 89 Printed by Silver Pines Services Cover photo: Duke of Burgundy: Andrew Cooper Tel: 01732 465641 www.silverpines.co.uk 2 | The Adonis The Adonis | 3 like-minded people, get out in the fresh Our Annual General Meeting and Chair’s Welcome air and are an opportunity to make a Members’ Day is coming up soon. real difference for our lepidoptera. One This year we will be back in Lenham of my highlights of the year was seeing with a fantastic line up of speakers and By the time you read this the 2019 butterfly season will be all but over and Brown Hairstreaks in the Keston area, of course the usual photo competition an experience that probably wouldn’t autumn well upon us. Looking back, the summer was more erratic than last and raffle. See the agenda enclosed have been possible without the hard year although Kent was officially the sunniest county in the UK according and please do come along for what work and dedication of our volunteers promises to be a very enjoyable day. to the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre. With 736 hours of last autumn. Last but not least, a big thank you sunshine there was plenty of good butterflying to be had! Hopefully you will have received the to Richard Oram for designing this he season got off to a good start The 10th anniversary of the Big email about our new initiative to make edition of The Adonis. If you have any with our county achieving some Butterfly Count was the most The Adonis available online on the thoughts for future articles please do Tnotable national first sightings; successful ever with well over 100,000 branch area of the website, as well as send them my way. sending out the hard copies which are Green Hairstreak were spotted on 24 counts. Kent submitted the third- Nathan Jones, Chair March at Queendown Warren by Joanne highest number of counts of all restricted to a degree by the costs of Fegan, Small Blue on 14 April at counties in the UK! Thank you to printing. The online version allows us Langdon Cliffs by Phil Smith and Chalk everyone who submits their records; to include fuller content and additional Hill Blues were seen in Kent on 29 every piece of data helps to build colour. You may need to register your June, a joint-first with the Isle of Wight. a more detailed picture of how our email address so we can keep in touch. It was an exciting year for rare butterflies and moths are faring in migrants, with several Large increasingly concerning times for the Tortoiseshells and a Camberwell environment. If you are interested Beauty seen in the spring and a Queen in walking a transect or a Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey square, of Spain Fritillary and Long-tailed Green Hairstreak (photo credit: Iain Leach) Blues at the end of summer. 2019 please get in touch. is also notable for the Painted Lady The second stage application for Kent’s influx which gained a lot of interest in Magnificent Moths has been submitted the press and with the general public. to the National Lottery Heritage Fund Engagement and education are vital to and we keep our fingers crossed for our cause. good news later this year. If successful, it will be the largest moth conservation project ever in the UK. A huge thank you to Project Officer Lucia Chmurova Duke of Burgundy (photo credit: Mark Searle) for her work on this! Large Tortoiseshell (photo credit: Tamás Nestor) We had a successful programme of well-attended field trips and it was a pleasure to meet many of you at these. Moving into winter, we have a number of conservation projects to get involved with. Please see our schedule of work parties and if you haven’t been along to one before I thoroughly recommend them! They are a great way to meet Chalk Hill Blue (photo credit: Iain Leach) Heath Fritillary (photo credit: Tamás Nestor). 4 | The Adonis The Adonis | 5 Trust’s Brilliant Butterfly Banks. Both is invaluable for providing a picture Regional Conservation these projects will offer some great of how species are doing at county, opportunities to get involved in nature regional and national levels, which conservation and I’m sure members has never been more important, given Manager’s Report will get to hear much more about these uncertain and changing times. these projects. As ever, the South East is an exciting Butterfly surveys across Kent will place for wildlife, for conservation 2019 was another unpredictable but fascinating season. Thankfully, many continue to provide valuable feedback action and for sightings. I’ve no of our highest priority butterflies seem to have had a good year. The Heath on how our colonies are faring. We doubt 2020 will be just as exciting, Fritillary and Duke of Burgundy did well, thanks in no small part to recent are so grateful to the volunteers who fascinating and probably just as targeted projects and to the great work of volunteers. walk the weekly transects, to those unpredictable. who record their sightings when out- cross the South East, all of the (including Natural England, the RSPB) Steve Wheatley and-about and those that get involved BC Branches and volunteers are and local authorities. We certainly hope Regional Conservation Manager for South in the Big Butterfly Count. The data East England Adoing great work for our most that this project further strengthens threatened species. Conservation our relationship with the many different partners like the RSPB, Natural organisations working in Kent towards England, Kent Wildlife Trust and White the same goal of saving nature. Cliffs Countryside Partnership are also We’re very grateful to the National all giving a lot of attention to butterfly Lottery Heritage Fund (and to lottery and moth conservation. players) for funding the 9 months This year we’ve been busy developing of project development work. Our the ambitious Kent’s Magnificent funding application for the full three Moths project. Our project year project has been submitted to Development Officer, Lucia Chmurova, the NLHF and we await their decision. has put together a really exciting If successful, this project will launch project that will link our conservation in April, with two new and dedicated efforts with many local community project officers delivering the work. groups, schools and conservation Other very good news for butterflies partners. Kent is home to some of this year includes Kent Nature the UK’s rarest and most threatened Partnership adopting the Adonis Blue moths, including the Black-veined Moth as one of their key indicator species (as pretty as any butterfly and found for the Kent Biodiversity Strategy 2019 nowhere else in the UK), the stunning to 2044. This will mean that the Adonis Sussex Emerald (which despite its Blue will enjoy a significantly higher name is established only in Kent), and profile amongst conservation partners the quite unique Fiery Clearwing (found in Kent, and being championed, around the Kent coast). The project will monitored and encouraged for the next offer all sorts of opportunities to get 25 years. up-close with this species and many Two London-centric projects that will more of Kent’s magnificent moths. offer new and different opportunities The project is being supported by a to Kent members are our Big City wide range of conservation partners Butterflies project and London Wildlife The iconic White Cliffs of Dover. Kent are home to some of the UK’s rarest and most threatened species. 6 | The Adonis The Adonis | 7 The 2019 Butterfly Season Are our landscapes joined-up? Testing functional connectivity using butterflies. Alana Skilbeck, Kent Wildlife Trust There was lots of good news for our butterflies in 2019. Some of the rarer butterflies, such as Duke of Burgundy and Heath Fritillary, have had a good year. Numbers of Small Blue showed a large increase at sites such as he natural world isn’t just surveyed by volunteers and so far something for us to enjoy, it our volunteers have recorded Adonis Fackenden Down, and Bex Cartwright found a new colony in the grounds of Tsustains us. The fragmentation blue on Kent Wildlife Trust reserves at Thanet Earth glasshouse complex.