The mixed fortunes of our winged wonders

Another Life: Wry as I feel about amateur naturalists "tracking the progress" of global warming (akin to encouraging Noah to keep tabs on how many elephants drowned today), I was able to love the first peacock butterfly as it darted abroad last month for its own voluptuous colour, its velvety splendour as it roamed the primroses and dandelions for nectar. Only then did I bother to log how early it was (March 25th - nothing special).

Over in Dublin, a peacock had been spotted weeks earlier, on March 7th, on hebe flowers in Howth, and the first holly blue turned up in a Donnybrook garden on the 19th. There were peacocks in late March even on Rathlin Island, that chilly outpost of the north, and small tortoiseshells galore all over the country - including one, to my delight, here in Thallabawn in Co Mayo, where they have been rare for years. As for red admirals - once exclusively a summer migrant from Europe but now a random hibernator here - there was one even on January 5th on Dublin's Grafton Street.

An overview of Ireland's butterflies has come from the Dublin Naturalists Field Club, which now has more than 100,000 records in its database and runs the website, www.butterflyireland.com.

Some "indicative/tentative" conclusions from the records, most of which have come since 1998, outline the increasingly shaky fortunes of our 28 resident species.

Out on its own with more than a 50 per cent decline is the marsh fritillary, the beautiful "stained glass" butterfly that lives in colonies on boggy fringes, laying its eggs almost exclusively on devil's bit scabious, so vulnerable to drainage and "reclamation".

Down by a third are another nine species, several highly dependent on semi-natural grassland, and one, the large heath butterfly, is losing its cottongrass food plant as bogs are drained, overgrazed or forested. Down by a 10th are another eight butterflies, most with special niches in the kind of countryside that gets "improved" out of existence or is vanishing under concrete.

The peacock and holly blue happen to be doing rather well: the first lays eggs on the island's abundant nettles (as do the small tortoiseshell and red admiral) and the second is undergoing something of a population explosion in the greater Dublin area and other parts of the east coast, where holly and ivy form a substantial share of the burgeoning green biomass of gardens and parks.

Any blue butterfly seen fluttering around shrubs a few metres above the ground is almost certainly a holly blue. But the butterflies emerging in early spring - the only blue ones then on the wing - lay their eggs singly on the flower buds of holly trees. The later generations of summer and autumn, however, lay eggs on the flower buds of ivy. Last year the Dublin holly blues also appeared in mid-March and added new locations, including the grounds of Trinity College. Thanks to global warming, which already brings out some of our butterflies about 10 days earlier than usual, the holly blue seems to be squeezing in a third brood of caterpillars in the season.

Last year brought a new breeding butterfly to the southeast, which is fast becoming a bridgehead for immigrant insects encouraged by global warming.

The small skipper is a darting, eye-catching flyer, glinting golden-brown in the sun and perching with wings half-open. Already widespread in Wales and spreading north in England, its arrival in the south of Co Wexford should not, perhaps, surprise, and summer waysides provide plenty of tall Yorkshire fog grass as food for its caterpillars. There are several different skippers in the UK, but until now we only had one - the dingy skipper, more like a speckled brown moth than a butterfly.

That gives us about another 30 butterflies to go to catch up with Britain, which has had greater warmth in its southern counties and many specialist habitats such as chalk downs and sun-baked heaths to support species that live in settled colonies around specific food-plants. What we have that is special, beside the Burren flora and limestone warmth, is bog vegetation, and the wonderfully new wilderness now growing up on the cutaway peatlands given up by Bord na Móna in the midlands.

At Lullamore Bog West in Co Kildare, a wonderful mosaic of habitats has developed on the cutaway: rough, tussocky grassland, scrub, birch woodland and conifers, marshland, bare peat and a pond. All this finds homes for more butterfly species within a mere 12 acres than almost any other site in the east of Ireland, including endangered species such as the marsh fritillary and intensely local species such as the brimstone, dark green fritillary and dingy skipper. Acquired by the Irish Peatland Conservation Council and tended by butterfly enthusiasts, it now ranks with Europe's prime sites for butterfly conservation.

Eye On Nature

In a nearby field two starlings were wrestling on the ground pecking and clawing each other savagely. I got within a foot of them before they flew away with a third starling. Two males fighting over a female?

... Barbara Browne, Knockmore, Co Mayo

Starling flocks have more males than females, so the male of a pair guards the female fiercely against unmated males.

Between the visitor centre and Mizen Head lighthouse we observed four adult common lizards (Lacerta vivipara) on the pathway and on the southwest-facing grassy banks. One was black, how common is this?

... Bernard Delahunt, Leixlip, Co Kildare

Males are darker than females and have a variety of black marks on their backs with patterns unique to the individual.

During the first week in April, when digging in the garden, I watched a female blackbird carrying worms away to its nest and returning in a very short time to repeat the process. I can only assume that she was feeding chicks, which is very early for them to be hatched.

... Martin Crotty, Blackrock, Co Louth