Tales from the Hill: Summer 2025

25 June 2025

During a recent survey, our ecologist Matt was delighted to spot both Marsh Fritillary and Chequered Skipper butterflies here on Kingairloch estate—a rare and special find. If you are lucky enough to spot something unique while visiting Kingairloch, we would love to see your images! Simply email us at:[email protected].

New Discoveries at Kingairloch

After a cold late start to the Spring the sunny, dry conditions that followed were favourable for many species of insects especially early flying damselflies and butterflies.

Most noticeable of the nationally rare butterflies that showed themselves at Kingairloch in excellent numbers across the Estate this year were Chequered Skipper and Marsh Fritillary.

Chequered Skipper

Apart from a reintroduced population in eastern England the Chequered Skipper is restricted to areas of damp purple moor grass bordering woodland edges and low density scrub in Western Scotland. Southern Lochaber is their stronghold. Purple moor grass is the food plant of their caterpillars and these fast flying small butterflies can be seen flitting from many different nectar providing flowers in May and June.

The equally beautiful and rare Marsh Fritillary is only found in South Lochaber, Argyll and the Argyll islands.

Marsh Fritillary

This species favours open but unshaded, mostly sheltered grassland with good densities of the blue flowered devils-bit scabious. This plant is the caterpillars sole food plant. These fascinating almost black caterpillars form communal webs around the food plant.

The adults feed on other nectar sources including favouring bugle as devils-bit scabious is not in flower during their normal flight period in May and June.

Both species attract much conservation effort to try to maintain and enhance their specific habitats and connectivity between them.

Carefully timed, targeted conservation grazing with light weight Dexter and native Highland cattle are used on Kingairloch to achieve these butterfly and other conservation aims.

This tightly controlled cattle grazing is achieved on the Estate by using ‘no fence’ collars. Combined with careful monitoring to inform habitat management it is hoped that structured grazing efforts will help these fragile populations thrive and become more robust into the future.

 Chequered Skipper, Side View

Article and photos courtesy of Kingairloch Estate Ecologist Matt. Feature image credit: Akbar Nemati on Pexels.