Saturday 6th July 2024

There are between 50 and 60 butterflies in the UK and Ireland, some are more common than others, and of the rarer species, some like to bask, while others play hard to get.

Or see.

Of the latter is the Purple Emperor, which emerges for a few weeks in high summer, spending most of its time in the tree tops of sallow trees feeding on aphid honeydew.

But sometimes males come down to ground, so can be snapped. Over the years, various lures or substances, mostly fish-derived, have been tried to lure the butterflies down. And last week, a friend tried his brew, named "butterfly juice", and got at least two males to land in the car park of a country park and stay for over 15 minutes.

As that was just two days before, I said I would go up, and Billy armed with a new batch of juice would meet up and we hoped that the weather would play ball.

This meant having to get up promptly, get to Tesco, have breakfast and be out before half eight to travel to west Kent to be there to meet Billy.

We had a load of stuff to get at Tesco, so took a half hour to get round, spending what seems like a king's ransom for a week's provisions and supplies.

Jools decided to download Windows 11, but the final stage created a loop of requests, so she had to go into town to drop it off to be fixed, but said she was happy for me to go on my own to chase butterflies.

The forecast had not mentioned rain, or strong winds, but it seems no one told the weather.

Travelling up the M20, I went through two heavy showers, and when I got to the park, the ground was wet for another recent shower.

I met up with another snapper, Mike, and he showed me where the tree was near the car park where the males had come down from on Thursday.

It was cool, breezy and of the Emperor there was no sign.

We wandered round the meadows surrounding the trees, and found Meadow Browns, Ringlets and Gatekeepers, and when the sun came out, a single Silver Washed Fritillary and a White Admiral were seen, though only at a distance.

Billy arrived at 11, and dropped the juice, on the ground where he had on Thursday.

The strong winds blew clouds across the sky, brief periods of blue sky brought sunshine and clouds of brown butterflies.

A while later, we set off on the circular walk which shortly brought us to another of the hotspots, the cross roads of four tracks with hogweed in the centre, perfect for snapping basking butterflies and sever White Legged Damselflies, an uncommon species, but frequently seen here.

The sun came out, so I stayed there while the others walked off. So it was that I was buzzed by a single Purple Emperor, the only sighting of the day, as it swooped past me, the upper winds reflected bright purple. I swung round, but it was gone.

And that was that.

And then the rain came.

I had gone to meet with the others, so we had to shelter for twenty minutes under a tree, while day turned to night and the rain hammered down.

The sun came out and brought brilliant bright light, so we walked back to the car park, I waited half an hour more to see if the sun would come back.

It didn't.

So, I said goodbye and began to long drive back home.

On the way up, there was a queue of six miles of trucks for the port, so I drove back along the Alkham Valley, through River and up Whitfield Hill, getting back just before three, in time for a brew.

I had some cheese and crackers and a brew, as Jools had already eaten.

Then at five the football: England v Switzerland.

Two evenly matched teams, that cancelled each other out. Ten minutes to go, the Swiss scored thanks to a defensive lapse, and it all looked lost. But 5 minutes later, Saka cut in from the right and curled a shot into the far corner to level things.

It stayed that was to the end of normal time, and extra time, which meant penalties.

I had used the BBC i player to watch the BBC whilst listening to the commentary from Radio 5, this is usually a few seconds behind the actual TV feed, but a technical issue meant it was closer to two minutes. Which meant when the winning penalty went in in real time, our TV was two penalties behind, so heard the cheers from Bev and Steve next door. And I was watching the feed from the BBC website, which meant I knew when a penalty was missed or not.

Long gone are the days when this would have meant a defeat, so it was England scored all five of theirs, but the Swiss missed their first, so Trent Alexander Arnold hammered the winning spot kick to send England into the semi finals.

Almost straight away the last quarter final, Netherlands v Türkiye kicked off, and a great game it was, end to end stuff with lots of shots.

The Turks scored and looked like they would cling on, but two goals in five minutes in the last quarter put the Oranj armie through to play England on Wednesday.