The Suffolk Argus
Large and Late by Wilfrid George
Clouded Yellow
by BerylJohnson
6
July 1998
For ten years, all my butterflies were white. Hardly ever, in a West London suburb, was a 'coloured' butterfly to be seen. I remember one Red Admiral, one 'blue' (it must have been 'Holly') and one yellow butterfly squashed on a fence (probably 'Clouded'). That was all. Then World War Two moved us to Halesworth, and there I met the coloured lot. I also found how to cell which 'white' was which. It's not so easy as you chink. Even now, sending records into Ipswich, the whites are the hardest to spot, largely because they will not keep still. Which of the three is chat? Small, Large or Greenveined? Juse as you feel certain - it settles and turns out to be a female Orange Tip or a female Brimstone. I was in Austria a few years back, and whites were everywhere except chat every one of chem was a Pale Clouded Yellow. I see them everywhere, these 'whites' - from romantic African films to frantic Balkan war-reports. They also get at my garden greens. In the summer of 1997 I watched sadly as some of my favourite insects devoured my own food supply. I cold myself chat they would soon pupate, and that my ragged cabbages would recover. But 1997 had a sting in the tail. Those Large Whites emerged to another brood - eager to feast on my brassicas again. This time I took drastic action, and picked them off by hand. The black and yellow spotted caterpillars of the Large White are easy to see - but there were always more. I worked at it right through November - and even on 8th and 9th December (after several sharp frosts) I picked off each day three full-grown actively-feeding larvae. I do not remember these larvae at such a late dace before - is this a record?
What's that White? By SteveGoddard
Hands up all those who never have problems in identifying 'Whites' in flight or at a distance. Do I see no hands? Well, that's hardly surprising because most of us seem to have trouble at one time or another in getting to grips with 'Whites' on the wing or when they are not so closeup. After all they are white aren't they? And, in researching this article I have to say that there is no easy solution but there are some factors which seem to offer up some help. At fairly close range the Large White is usually distinguished by its larger size particularly, the larger females. However, what about distant Whites (and small Large Whites)? Here, judgement of size oflone individuals is not always as easy as it might seem. In these situations it is generally only best achieved when comparison can be made with other Whites at the same time but even then binocular users should beware of the potentially misleading effects of 'size illusion' when the farther of two objects looks larger than it really is in comparison with the nearer object!. Judging size* is probably the greatest difficulty we have when encountering a single distant White because
Large White
by DouglasHammersley
15
