Brown Hairstreak butterflies
10 September 2009

Lynda Snell is very excited to have seen a Brown Hairstreak butterfly in Ambridge. And there is a particular reason for The Archers to feature this particular species.

Brown Hairstreak butterfly

This rare butterfly breeds on blackthorn in woods and mainly on hedgerows in farmland. The strongest surviving colonies in the Midlands are near Inkberrow in east Worcestershire - very much "Archers country". The Old Bull pub in Inkberrow is well known as the model for the Bull in Ambridge.

The Brown Hairstreak is rare because it lays its eggs on blackthorn twigs in late summer. They overwinter there and the caterpillars hatch in May and become butterflies in August. But hedgerow management by mechanical flailing in autumn and spring has wiped out the butterfly over large areas of Britain. The Butterfly Conservation charity has alerted farmers and encouraged them top stagger their hedge-trimming programmes.

The butterflies are medium-sized, smaller than a Cabbage White, and brown on the upper side with orangey underwings. The females have bold orange bands on the upper forewings. They emerge from the chrysalis in mid-August and can be on the wing until early October, so they are one of the later British butterflies. Each individual can live for several weeks.

Elusive

Unlike many butterflies, the elusive Brown Hairstreak spends a lot of time crawling about on vegetation or flying high in the tops of trees. They are not very fond of flowers.

The males congregate around "master trees" often early in the day, but are otherwise quite hard to see. Females are brighter and easier to spot, as they spend a lot of time walking about on low blackthorn scrub in hedges and woodland edges laying their eggs. They can very tame while doing this and allow a close approach.

The caterpillars are not very distinctive and aren't easy to see as they spend most of their time on the underside of blackthorn leaves where they are hidden from predators.

The best way to establish whether brown hairstreaks are about is to look for their eggs (not chrysalises). These are tiny white dots, about the size of a pinhead laid in the right-angle between the stem and thorns of blackthorn and are best counted when the leaves have fallen in winter. They do stand out surprisingly well, and villagers in the Inkberrow area go out with butterfly conservation volunteers to count them.

These surveys have shown that the range of the species is now increasing towards Droitwich and Hanbury. In a further Archers connection, Hanbury church is the model for St Stephens, Ambridge and has been used for photography and location recording.

More about the Brown Hairstreak

Photo: Peter Eeles/Butterfly Conservation

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