Large and late

by Wilfrid George

Clouded Yellow by Beryl Johnson

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? J use 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?