Silver-studded Blues with Tom Lee

With the clocks going back and with us now firmly into autumn, I find myself reflecting on the summer and, in particular, my volunteering with the surveys of the fragile Silver-studded Blue butterfly on Ashdown Forest.

Like so many volunteering activities, mine started by accident. After I retired some 14 years ago after forty years in offices, I often found myself on the forest with my DSLR camera photographing wildlife. I had a fondness for butterflies and heard that the Silver-studded Blue could be seen in parts of the forest, although I’d never seen one. Then one day a fellow photographer told me that I might see them in the area below the ‘Smugglers’ car park, so I went there on my next outing. I had no luck but decided to try again and I found them. Tiny, bright blue butterflies with a wingspan of just 30mm, they were much smaller than I had imagined, but I got those photographs whilst they were settling on the Bell Heather, for which the forest is known.

A little while later I saw a post on social media, from Butterfly Conservation, asking that if anyone spotted a Silver-studded Blue on the forest then could they record the location. I was pleased to help. The following year there was a request for volunteers to survey a specific transect for the summer when the adult butterflies were on the wing. Again, I was happy to help as they are there as adults for only about seven weeks. As they live in adult form for only five days, by going once a week I could be reasonably sure that I wasn’t counting the same butterfly twice.

In conjunction with Butterfly Conservation Sussex in June 2019, a 7km circular route was decided for my transect and by the end of the season I had counted 138 of these fragile beauties.

The following year I was asked if I would consider surveying the same transect for the same weeks and I have done it ever since (even if the slopes do seem to get steeper every year!).

Lots of work has been done to encourage their survival, and I have seen their numbers increase almost every year. The peak was in 2023 when I recorded 839, and it is now a part of my life that, for seven weeks from the 10 June, I can be seen with my clipboard and camera patrolling my patch, looking for patches of Bell Heather and the beautiful, fragile, Silver-studded Blue butterfly.