The Collard Hill Experience
Matthew Oates out in the field
Matthew Oates is the National Trust butterfly and other invertebrates specialist and has had a lifelong interest in butterflies. He has been involved in the Collard Hill project since its inception. Matthew is active as a writer and broadcaster for the National Trust and has a new book out in June 2011
My journey to Collard Hill takes me through the village of Didmarton, in south Gloucestershire. The entrance to an old Cotswold stone house there is adorned by a huge pinkish rambling rose – a Himalayan Musk probably – that blooms when the Large Blue is on the wing.
In recent years it has carried an increasing amount of flowers. Its flowering period is synchronised perfectly with the Large Blue’s flight season at Collard, and you can also tell how good the Large Blue is going to be by the abundance of flowers.
This year this rose is almost over-burdened. Perhaps we don’t need to monitor Large Blue numbers at Collard, just look at the rose? I wonder if other regular visitors to Collard have similar experiences along the way? It is that sort of place.
Many of us now make an annual pilgrimage to Collard. It is not just the butterfly that attracts us, though it is a class act (but there are classier British butterflies…). The views over the Levels, past Compton and Lollover hills and out towards the Blackdowns, Quantocks and the Brendons, are quite compelling. Season and landscape come together nicely at the top of Collard during the Large Blue flight period, creating a dreamscape.
And that part of Somerset is rather special at that time of year, with the Glastonbury festival taking place, curious spiritual things happening on the Tor.
The Collard Hill experience offers another dimension to mid Somerset in mid to late June, and traveller’s vehicles parked in odd corners. As a famous poet, buried down the road in East Coker church, once put it: ‘All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.’
Collard offers a unique social scene for butterfly folk. There are other epicenters where we gather in numbers, most notably Fermyn Woods in Northamptonshire, but Collard is where we socialise best – the National Trust ensures that we do.
It has become a spiritual home of butterflyers. That is nothing new, for the central woods of the New Forest were just that during the hey-day of old fashioned collecting. But butterflying has moved on since those days, at Collard Hill it has moved on wondrously.
But how do we take things further, if at all? The National Trust doesn’t make any money out of the venture, which is a bit odd because the Trust is a business, albeit one with a strong conservation remit.
We don’t particularly want to turn Collard into a nice little earner, not least because that would spoil it. And asking for donations wouldn’t seem right either.
Maybe, when the weather’s good, we should erect some sort of marquee on top of the hill, fill it with rickety tables and chairs, and offer Afternoon Tea – and just celebrate? Maybe we need to establish some traditions, such as an obligation to wear the Large Blue’s colours, or have a Silly Hat Sunday?
Ideas are welcome, including the bizarre.
Matthew.Oates@nationaltrust.org.uk
Follow me on Twitter on http://twitter.com/NTMatthewOates
Dave Simxoc on his first visit to Collard Hill
- Large Blue on Collard Hill, by Ade Osmant
I can still remember first visiting Collard in the mid 1990s, not long after NT had acquired the site. I, together with my colleague Jeremy Thomas, had been asked by Matthew Oates to explore its potential for supporting a Large Blue colony in the future. The hill had clearly had very little grazing for a considerable period of time and, although there was plenty of Wild Thyme growing in a small area of the site called the Eastern Glade, it was incredibly sparse over the rest of the downs. It was a windy day and the site felt both too small and too exposed for Large Blues but we did decide to carry out an ant survey and were delighted to find that approximately 60% of the baits attracted large numbers of the butterfly’s host ant Myrmica sabuleti. Technically this was just enough to support a Large Blue colony but we recommended that the site needed some scrub management, the Wild Thyme needed help to spread across the site and most of all a regime of regular grazing be introduced.
Conservation by partnership
At the time all the partners in the Large Blue Project were very keen to find a site which had public access and where visitors could come and see and photograph this extraordinary butterfly first hand. The National Trust took a very committed stance to manage the site and we agreed to carry out regular monitoring which would inform future management decisions.
By 2000, the site had been well grazed for three years, both the ants and Wild Thyme had begun to spread and we collectively decided to make a trial introduction. The Somerset Wildlife Trust kindly allowed us to remove eggs from their nature reserve at Green Down, which were reared in captivity, and a total of 267 larvae were introduced during July of the same year. In 2001 the first adults emerged but bizarrely, this open access site was closed to the public due to Foot and Mouth restrictions! Like many introduction attempts the population stuttered for the first few years, a series wet Junes did not help and the grazing took a while to get right.
Visitors welcomed by large numbers of
- Collard Hill
What became immediately apparent was that the site was a huge attraction to visitors with many people traveling long distances. Each year NT recruits a volunteer ranger to help visitors to see the butterfly and to answer their many questions. I know that this has been greatly appreciated by literally thousands of people. It personally gives me enormous pleasure to watch visitors each year get their first glimpse of this iconic butterfly on this stunning site.
Rob Holden became responsible for the management of the site in 2005 and used his gentle powers of persuasion to get the grazing spot on and the rest, as they say, is history. The population is now breeding right across the site and numbers have increased each year. Rob also works extremely hard, often behind the scenes, to ensure that visitors to the site can both see and learn about the butterfly.
The important role of Collard Hill in creating new Large Blue populations
- Dave Simcox at Collard Hill, May 2011
Numbers were so good last year that for the first time over two hundred eggs were removed from Collard and used with additional eggs from Green Down to make two experimental introductions to the Cotswolds. I was ably assisted in this project by Sarah Meredith after she had completed her role as Collard warden. Jeremy Thomas and I are delighted that Sarah is working for us this summer and, amongst other duties, will be monitoring the success of the Cotswold introductions. Sarah’s post is being jointly funded by Oxford University and the National Trust, the latter with the proceeds from the Large Blue Christmas Virtual Gift sales.
David Simcox is a research ecologist and has worked on the Large Blue butterfly for nearly 30 years. He now works freelance including contracts from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and Butterfly Conservation.
