Welcome to the small blue

When walking my butterfly transect at the nature reserve I was thrilled to see a Small blue in an area that could not have supported them since around 1942! Three fields, close to the highest point in the Chilterns, were ploughed towards the end of WWII and were then arable or a monoculture grass ley for the next 58 years, until the Wildlife Trust managed to buy them as an extension to Dancersend Reserve in 2000. In 2011 we excavated a series of scrapes into the raw chalk and started to scatter seed gathered from the rest of the reserve. The results, six years on, are remarkable, with special plants like Chiltern gentian, Basil thyme and Slender bedstraw now established, but the main goal has always been to produce good habitat for some of the iconic butterflies of the dry chalk slopes of the Chilterns. Small blue has now managed to find the patches of Kidney vetch (probably from well over a mile away) and we hope Chalkhill blue will follow as the amount of Horseshoe vetch increases.