Purple emperor – an audience with “His Majesty”

It was an interesting few days. Having found yet another new reserve, I failed to photograph either of the two butterflies I had gone to see. I can’t complain, because I did get a lovely meadow brown and discovered another variety of longhorn beetle.

I also bumped into the lovely gentleman who had helped me photograph the black hairstreak just a couple of weeks earlier. He kindly explained the layout of the woods and told me the best places to find white admirals, silver-washed fritillaries and the elusive purple emperor. The latter is the second-largest butterfly found in the UK and probably the most beautiful. Affectionately known as “His Majesty” by enthusiasts, they try to lure the males down from their treetop canopy with an assortment of offerings. These include rotting banana skins, shrimp paste and a variety of animal droppings. Maybe it was because I hadn’t brought any gifts, but I didn’t get a glimpse of any of the top three for the entire day.

Not to be put off, I made the short drive to the woods just a few days later. This time a few images had started appearing on the local butterfly group on Facebook and the car park was nearly full. As I walked up to the first junction, I passed two gentlemen with cameras and binoculars. They asked if I was looking for the emperor and said one had been displaying well on the ground for half an hour. By the time I arrived, he was already flitting round in the treetops again. At least if I had to wait I wasn’t going to be alone, as there were several people on the path, including my friend from the previous week. We stood around and from time to time one would bait the nearby bracken with fish paste.

It was all to no avail though because three hours later we had seen up to five males in the canopy, but nothing had landed. We wandered off and spent the next hour or so photographing dragonflies. In spite of the disappointment, it was a lovely day and one I will never forget. I made new friends and learned a lot from people with years of experience.

The weekend was too busy to think about wildlife as we had our normal chores. Mucking out the field shelter, cleaning the fields, topping up the bedding in the ferret room and moving our chicken’s run to a fresh patch of grass. One of the last jobs was to steam clean all the litter trays before starting the evening round. As I wandered into the kitchen I noticed something dark on the window mesh. We use screens to keep the cats indoors while allowing us to open the windows. I moved closer and saw it was a butterfly. Thinking it was one of the little brown jobbies that flit across the lawn, I very nearly paid no attention. While my head was convinced it was nothing special, my feet were making their way to the door. As I went outside, it flew off, but I could see this was no small butterfly. Rushing indoors to grab the camera, I returned to find it had landed on our porch roof. By the time I had fired off a couple of shots, the flash of purple was unmistakable. One of Britain’s most stunning butterflies had graced us with his presence. He stayed for an hour before flying off into the trees. We haven’t seen him since.