February on Hothfield Heathland

Among the birds seen in January were a great white egret, along with all the little egrets, water rail and stonechat. The highland cattle and Herdwick sheep have spent the winter outside and on a warm February day, you might even see a small tortoiseshell butterfly emerging from hibernation in its adult state. It will also be one of the last flying about in late autumn.

Hibernation for our resident butterflies and moths means different things for different species. The master of camouflage, the buff-tip moth which feeds in summer on birch, oak, sallow and hazel, all present on the heath, spends winter as a chrysalis underground, emerging only in late spring, to fly in June and July. As a moth, it most closely resembles a birch twig and there is always plenty of birch to lurk in on the heath.

The meadow brown butterfly overwinters as a green caterpillar (larva) hidden head down deep in a clump of grass. On warmer days it will be munching away at the grass, always one of its preferred food species, fattening up for the next moult. The vibration of your footsteps will make it drop to the ground out of danger until you pass and it crawls up to its feeding station again.

The caterpillar of the small copper butterfly feeds on the underside of leaves of sorrel and dock, eating itself into a groove and attaching itself for the winter to a leaf or leaf stem by a pad a silk.

The year’s final brood of the small white butterfly overwinters as a chrysalis (pupa) attached to a tree trunk by a silk girdle. Gardeners won’t want to know that this, one of the cabbage whites, is just waiting to metamorphose and find food plants in the brassica family on which to lay its eggs.