John & Maria's Photography Pages

No mow and butterflies

During the Covid lockdown times Plymouth City Council decided to designate certain areas of previously regularly mown grass as no mow meadowland.  One such area starts less than 50 yards from my house in the Whitleigh area of Plymouth.  The cynic might say that this was just a cost cutting exercise - but the ecologist and photographer in me was delighted to see what would turn up now the grass wasn't being razed on a regular basis.

I had time on my hands this summer.  Unable to get further afield as often as before, a regular couple of hours among the new meadow area seemed like an ideal photo opportunity.  And so it proved.

The gear of choice was my Olympus EM1 MkII, 60mm macro with STF-8 twin flash, and 40-150mm f2.8 and 1.4x teleconverter.  I took a monopod to support the gear. Even with the effective IBIS and light weight of the camera and lenses it helps to have a little extra stabilisation.

The results delighted me:

Common blue, Polyommatus icarus

Gatekeeper butterfly, Pyronia tithonus

Large skipper butterfly, Ochlodes sylvanus

Marbled white butterfly, Melanargia galathea

Meadow brown butterfly, Maniola jurtina

Small copper butterfly, Lycaena phlaeas

Because the grass had been previously mown on a regular schedule only the hardiest nectar plants had survived. Principally Achillea millefolium, yarrow and Centaurea nigra, knapweed, they have provided a nectar source for these meadow butterflies, allowing them to colonise and flourish in what was previously rather sterile ground.  There are many who would consider the no mow results as being rather untidy - but for the colonising butterflies it's a new and previously unavailable space.

Of course it wasn't just butterflies that came in.  Many other insects alos arrived. But that's a story for another post.