I thought Berger’s clouded yellow was a can of paint until I went to Hungary.
In fact, as any good lepidopterist will tell you, it’s a butterfly, an
exquisite, primrose-pale insect with an orange spot on each hind wing.
Compared to Britain, Hungary is a butterfly paradise. While we are hard put to
come up with 59 species, the Hungarians have 170 — and in far greater
numbers. The draining of the fens in the 1860s did for our native large
copper. The large blue is confined to the West Country and the black-veined
white vanished in the 1920s. Yet, as I discovered to my delight, all three
are common in Hungary.
It’s one of the rather lovely by-products of Hungary’s slightly antiquated
approach to farming. Although modern techniques are appearing, many areas
remain in the horse-and-cart age, avoiding the insidious kiss of
insecticides. Instead, there are huge old-fashioned hay meadows humming with
bees, sizzling with grasshoppers and quivering with butterflies.
It means Hungary was a natural choice when the ecotravel specialist Naturetrek
launched a programme of holidays based around butterflies — safaris with
insects, not animals.
My induction into the arcane world of the lepidopterist began among the
limestone hills of the Aggtelek National Park, near the Slovak border. Our
party of butterfly-lovers, including experts carrying gardeners’ kneeling
pads and specialist camera equipment, arrived after one of the coldest,
wettest springs on record. Although summer had begun, the sky was overcast
and the butterflies were hiding in the long grass.
Next morning, though, the sun is shining and butterflies are emerging all over
the hillsides. “I don’t know any other place in Europe where you can step
out of your hotel and see 20 species on the wing,” says Vic Tucker, our
guide.
Many are familiar: orange tips, brimstones, meadow browns. But there are
others I’d never heard of: Nickerl’s fritillary, Reverdin’s blue and the
handsome Hungarian glider, cruising along on chocolate-and-cream wings.
The group is in raptures. Sightings transform them into schoolkids, rushing
around in hot pursuit, displaying awesome net skills — deft wrist flicks and
forehand smashes worthy of Andrew Murray.
In the old days, any butterfly unfortunate enough to be netted ended up on a
board with a pin through its thorax. Not any more. Today’s captives are
drooled over, snapped for posterity and released.
The Aggtelek is idyllic, with thyme-scented hillsides and damp valley bottoms
where hay is still cut by hand. In early June, the ripening grasses are lit
by purple sweeps of meadow clary, and at every step more butterflies break
cover. By the end of day one, we’ve clocked up 50 species.
And, while I know this is supposed to be a butterfly holiday, I can’t help but
notice the birds. Cuckoos and orioles call from the woods, and honey
buzzards command the skies. Besides, our local guide, Gerard Gorman, is
probably the foremost birder in eastern Europe. A Liverpudlian with a wry
sense of humour, he came to Hungary 20 years ago, married a local and has
lived in Budapest ever since. He quietly points out a red-backed shrike and
identifies the piping cry of a wryneck.
There are all kinds of woodland mammals, too: beech martens, wild boar, red
deer. Occasionally, wandering lynx or wolves come south from Slovakia —
though we only saw hares.
But we’d come for butterflies, and in midweek moved north to the Bukk National
Park, on the southern edge of the snow-capped Carpathians. We drove through
a landscape of woods, vineyards and villages where storks nested on
telegraph poles and long, low houses had wooden verandas and free-range
hens.
Among Bukk’s dense woodland are glades, rides and sunlit meadows, home to
prized butterflies such as clouded apollos, black hairstreaks and poplar
admirals. For the rest of the week, we were based deep in these woods, in
the village of Noszvaj. Our family-owned hotel, the Nomad, was wonderfully
friendly, with epic home cooking — at dinner, soup tureens are left on the
table, but Gorman warns us not to overindulge, because of the size of the
dishes to follow.
At night, I’m serenaded by tree frogs and nightingales. By morning the frogs
are silent, but the nightingales still sing flat out, an opening serenade
for jaunts around the park.
We visit the grass bowl of the Nagy Mezo (Great Meadow) to see a colony of the
aptly named scarce fritillary. And, driving deeper into the park, where the
meadows are home to quails and corncrakes, we spot more butterflies,
including the catch of the day — a purple emperor, the gorgeous butterfly
also found in southern England.
By now, the Hungarian summer is in full swing. Turtledoves purr in the
streamside poplars and the air is thick with the scent of meadowsweet. At
midday, drugged by the sultry heat, I sprawl in the shade of an ancient
willow and look out through the nodding grass heads to see a constant
movement of butterflies.
Later, with Gorman on hand to translate, I talk to a farmer who is just about
to mow the meadow that is home to the purple emperor. The hay is good this
year — more than enough for his seven cows.
But there is no longer money in farming. It’s a familiar tale. Someone has
made an offer to buy his land and build a golf course, he tells me — a
worrying sign of things to come now Hungary is in the EU.
On our last day, we climb into the minibus and drive out to the northern edges
of the Nagy Alfold, the great Hungarian plains that stretch eastwards from
the Danube all the way to Romania and the Ukraine. Here the fields are as
wide as the sea, with no hedges or fences between them, only long drainage
dykes bordered by silver-leaved Russian olive trees, isolated farmsteads and
flowering islands of false acacia.
We have come to look for lowland species — dappled whites, Bath whites, pale
clouded yellows — but Gorman, always the consummate ornithologist, picks out
two birds of prey atop a thicket. They are red-footed falcons — another
first for me — and at this point I forget butterflies and revel in the sight
of these glorious raptors as they race overhead, snatching at dragonflies.
By the end of the week, we have clocked up more than 80 species of butterfly.
There are varieties alien to Britain — the southern festoon and the map — as
well as rarities seldom, if ever, seen at home, including the Queen of Spain
fritillary, with its silver-splashed underside.
No wonder the aficionados are overjoyed. I’m thrilled too — and, having spent
time with them, I think I can see why the love of butterflies can become an
all-consuming passion. After all, what human designer could dream up a
Camberwell beauty or create the sheen on an emperor’s wings?
Travel details: Brian Jackman travelled as a guest of
Naturetrek (01962 733051, www.naturetrek.co.uk). Its eight-day guided
butterfly trip to the Aggtelek and Bukk National Parks costs £985pp in July
(single-room supplement £140), including flights from London to Budapest,
transfers, all food and accommodation in comfortable rural hotels. Ten per
cent of the proceeds from each tour goes towards butterfly conservation.
Responsible Travel (01273 600030, www.responsibletravel.com) also offers
butterfly safaris.
