Sophie Bennett
A meadow in high summer
Between late June and the end of August, a rough hay meadow, a coastal grassland or a chalk downland slope will hold more butterflies than most people realise. The difficulty is that the commonest ones are all brownish, all roughly the same size, and all prone to drifting up in front of you and vanishing again. Rather than chasing them, stand still and read three things: the flight pattern, the markings visible when one settles, and the flowers it chooses to visit. Once you have those three habits in mind, the confusion clears surprisingly quickly. Meadow browns, ringlets and marbled whites account for the great majority of what you will see on a warm July afternoon, and each has its own signature.
The meadow brown: the constant fluttering companion
The meadow brown is usually the most numerous butterfly in the field, and often the one that makes you give up trying to identify anything at all. It flies low and busily, never quite settling, jogging up and down over the grass as though it has somewhere to be. Watch for a few seconds and you will notice the flight is erratic rather than graceful, with a habit of dropping into the vegetation and closing up immediately.
When one does settle, look at the forewing. You should see a patch of orange-brown, duller in females and brighter in males, containing a single black eye spot with a white pupil. The underside is a soft, mottled brown with a smaller eye spot showing through, which is what you mostly see when it rests with wings closed. It favours bramble, thistles, knapweed, ragwort and red clover, and it is on the wing from June into September, often the last butterfly left standing in early autumn.
The ringlet: dark wings and a bobbing flight
Ringlets look almost black in flight, and they move with a slow, flopping bounce, as though suspended on a length of elastic. They tend to stay lower than meadow browns and prefer taller, damper grass — field edges, woodland rides, rushy meadows and hedgerow verges. If a dark butterfly drifts past and seems to be bouncing rather than fluttering, it is almost certainly a ringlet.
The markings are the giveaway once it settles. The underside is a rich chocolate-brown velvet, dotted with a row of small eye spots, each one ringed with a pale yellow halo. There is no orange patch, which immediately separates it from a meadow brown. Count the rings if you can — usually four or five on the hindwing. Ringlets nectar on bramble, thistle, ragwort and marjoram, and peak in late June and July, fading as August wears on.
The marbled white: the chequerboard of chalk downland
The marbled white is the one nobody mistakes for anything else. Creamy white above with bold black chequering, it looks like a piece of Victorian tiling that has taken flight. Despite the name it is a member of the brown family, and its slow, gliding, floppy progress gives it away before you even see the pattern.
It is a butterfly of unimproved grassland: chalk and limestone downland especially, along with rough coastal slopes and old railway cuttings. Peak numbers fall in the first three weeks of July. Marbled whites spend a great deal of time on knapweed and field scabious, and they will happily sit for minutes at a time, wings open or half-closed, which makes them the easiest of the three to watch properly.
Telling them apart at a glance
- Flight: meadow brown — busy and erratic; ringlet — slow and bobbing; marbled white — buoyant and gliding.
- Colour in flight: meadow brown — warm brown with a flash of orange; ringlet — near-black; marbled white — black and white.
- Underside: meadow brown — mottled grey-brown with one large eye spot; ringlet — dark velvet with a row of haloed rings; marbled white — bold chequered pattern.
- Habitat: meadow brown — almost any flowery grassland; ringlet — taller, damper, shaded grass; marbled white — short, unimproved chalk or limestone turf.
- Season: ringlets peak earliest, marbled whites in mid-July, meadow browns last longest into September.
Flowers that bring them within reach
If you want butterflies to come to you rather than the other way round, find the nectar. Common knapweed, field scabious, bramble blossom, spear thistle and marjoram are the reliable favourites, with bird's-foot trefoil and selfheal attracting the smaller skippers and blues that fly alongside them. Ragwort is unpopular with landowners but superb for insects, and a stand of it will often hold dozens of butterflies at once.
Approach with the sun behind you and move slowly, keeping your shadow off the flower head. Early morning and late afternoon are best for settled, roosting butterflies, while the middle of a hot, still day gives you the best views of flight patterns. Give any meadow twenty minutes of patient standing before you start identifying anything. The first few minutes are always the emptiest; after that, the field settles and the butterflies come back to work.
