Theoretical Expositions

The following section documents the continually changing occurrence of butterflies, especially in South & west Yorkshire. Most of what is reproduced here first appeared in A4 or A5 pamphlets which were then handed out to interested individuals or groups. It was a simple gesture designed to counter the dominant tendency to make money out of everything. We all should begin to think of losing money, not making it, especially where nature is concerned.

The pamphlets were also anti copyright - so anyone was free to use the information without needing to seek our permission beforehand. Where possible, the original presentation has been adhered to and the pamphlets arranged in a more or less chronological order, beginning in 1999 with a pamphlet on the recent explosion of Green Hairstreak numbers in the vicinity of Halifax and Bradford. As time went by similar increases were recorded particularly as regards the Ringlet, Gatekeeper, Purple Hairstreak and now, possibly the White Lettter Hairstreak. And something of the same pattern, that sudden, unmistakeable presence, was evident among Purple Hairstreaks as with Green Hairstreaks in the same locality. A few years later large colonies of Dingy Skipper were discovered and at the same time the largest landlocked Grayling site in the UK was found. All are recorded here. Alarmingly, most of these newly discovered Dingy Skipper colonies are threatened with immediate destruction by a blinkered state machine that is encouraging the destruction of brownfield environments like quarries and colliery spoil heaps

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Green Hairstreak Discoveries in West Yorks

This first Green Hairstreak pamphlet was an appeal for more information on the changing habits of the Green Hairstreak prompted by the glorious spring of 1997 when on the hills and moors of West Yorkshire the butterfly appeared almost everywhere there was a covering of its foodplant, the bilberry. This really was unprecedented and caught everyone - as others were later to testify - by surprise.

Green Hairstreaks Take Bradford

The second pamphlet produced three years later was based on the realization that behind our backs the butterfly had dramatically 'invaded' the huge metropolitan district of Bradford city and was living cheek by jowl beside old (and not so old) industrial workings. The final section of this A4 pamphlet contained a sizable selection of photographs emphasizing surroundings and habitat because we felt field guide photography was of limited value and tends to create a distorting genre that, especially today, does more harm than good. We give our reasons in an accompanying text on photography which cites Walter Benjamin, Eric Hoskin, Kant and Hegel's Philosophy of the Fine Arts, etc.

Pictures From The Gloom

An uncompleted project which remained in maquette form. How Green Hairstreaks responded to a truly ferocious storm on Otley Chevin, West Yorks in May 1999. Had this phenomena been observed before?

Wintry Green Hairstreaks in West Yorkshire

The tale continues with a series of photographs of the exceptionally early, and freak emergence of the Green Hairstreak in March 2003 into a landscape practically devoid of greenery and flowers. It is set alongside a sombre text on the horrors of global warming whatever the illusions to the contrary in clder climes. It ends up with reference to he Permian extinction noting that academics always pull their punches.

Aberrations Among the Butterflies of West Yorks

An unfinished, rather scrappy, attempt to get to grips with a subject that had long interested us. Why had butterfly (and moth) aberrations been of such enduring fascination in Britain from the mid 19th Century onwards? Obviously there were biological reasons for this (hereditary factors and the origin of species) but there were also social, political even aesthetic ones that have been passed over in complete silence. When dealing with this question we inevitably found ourselves referring to the symbolist movement and in particular to the French poet, Mallarme and the Huysmans of 'Against Nature'. By beginning to break up all known forms of art both were moving from literary symbol to a search for practical ways of intervening in everyday matters. This theoretical framework forms the backdrop to previous research on the Green Hairstreak, Ringlet and Meadow Brown butterfly in West Yorks that emphasizes their variability. The whole idea was in fact spurred on by a new book about to be published on the butterflies of Yorkshire through the auspices of the Yorkshire Naturalists Union. We had been invited to write a section which, although the end result was far too big for such a project, had the merit of forcing us to put down ideas we had been chewing over for some time. This is the result.

The Purple Hairstreak Invades Bradford

A pamphlet produced in spring 2002 recording how this butterfly - unknown & unseen - had arrived in big numbers. How long had they been there? Most everywhere there were oaks the insect was to be seen - eventually. Bradford had suddenly become like the North Downs of Surrey, perhaps even more so. It concludes with an addition (not included in the original pamphlet) arising from our discovery of the butterfly in Skipton, a gateway town to the high Pennines. We concluded the butterfly is like a 'virtual' butterfly because here it spends most of the time perambulating about the leafy twigs rather than flying. A question arises: are some of these colonies extremely old, pre-dating the paleo-industrial era?

Blue Female of the Common Blue In West Yorks

A pamphlet discussing derivatives of the ab: mariscolare as the now dominant female variety replacing the 'typical' female. Why has this happened? Focused mainly on Bradford it includes photographic comparisons of the blue female from elsewhere in West Yorkshire including Brockadale ( Pontefract) and Healey Mills. Southern England is also brought into the picture.The conclusion is somewhat premature. In fact the typical form is staging something of a comeback by appearing to emerge before the blue female, creating, for some unaccountable reason, a genetic segregation in time.

Dingy Skipper Colonies in the Ex-Yorkshire Coalfield

Found in order to be lost? The changing face of the new urbanism as the sign of nature rules over its actual demise amidst the vanquishing of the miners. Nowhere is this more evident than in the former South Yorkshire coalfield.

Dingy Skipper Report

A long and often despairing account of the biocide now facing the Dingy Skipper on most ex-colliery locations and other brownfield sites in South & West Yorkshire. Eschewing convention in these matters space is devoted to the government's housing program and the central role owner occupation plays in modern day political economy. The more the government meets its target of house price deflation, the more it will be matched by a similar deflation in the numbers of Dingy Skippers, at least in the north.

The Ringlet

Old and New Friends in the Bradford area : Relying on old nature diary notes, an account of the Ringlets difficult and complex journey through the Metropolitan District of Bradford from the early 1990s up to the present day. Plus some provisional theoretical speculation on a European montane species.

Kineocology

The Butterflies of Industrial Dereliction : An account of various films recently made on the butterflies of vacant lots in West and South Yorkshire. Some of these films of various lengths were shown at a recent biodiversity conference in Bradford. Since then more venues have been arranged. Anyone wishing to show them should contact: [email protected]

Filmscripts.Miner/butterfly Destruction. Part 1

Filmscripts.Miner/Butterfly Destruction. Part 2

Filmscripts. Miner/Butterfly Destruction. Part 3

Filmscripts concerning some very disreputable films which for certain will never be seen anywhere. Ones that Bill Oddy would go apeship over. Still they are more the truth by miles about what's happening to the Dingy Skipper on the northern colliery spoil heaps than any information presented elsewhere. This is not spin......

MAYBEY BABY

A revolutionary critique of Richard Maybey : This critique concentrates on Richard Maybey's recent book, "Beechcombings" This guy has become a renowned, ecologically inclined, often well-crafted, natural history writer of somewhat radical persuasions. And here we hesitate because this disposition is paper thin as Mabey constantly shies away from radical conclusions especially in relation to concrete interventions inherited from "the revolution of modern art and the modern art of revolution". On the contrary, Mabey is deeply alarmed by these ineluctable conclusions. Though ecology implies an inter-disciplinary approach, there is plenty of baulking when a more fruitful dialectical approach is suggested particularly one that engages in an updating of the critique of political economy and the state and Maybey and his followers deeply shun, even venemously dislike this pathway to liberation...

Fuck the New Nature Writing

Essentially inseparable from "Mabey Baby" this text delves further into the eco-engage of the 'new' nature writing and its failure to encounter total revolutionary critique though providing hints here and there of what could be if only pushed further. Entailing, among other things, a critique of the form of the novel, the article traverses today's dominant tendency whereby nature is treated as a form of show biz entertainment, implying death through consumerism via the hospitalised beauty of the great 'butterfly' dome at St Alban's etc.... and in passing examining somewhat Buglife, Pestival and Workers' for Climate Action!

2009.The Microscope: Eye of the Age. Surveillance or pathway to liberation?

This is a text-cum-film on a quest into small organism ecology, increasingly deploying microscopes fixed to the lens of a movie camera. In this instance the subject of research is a dead Dingy Skipper butterfly found at Maltby Colliery in 2008. Initially this close-up approach was technically experimented with when observing Green Hairstreaks on and from Ovenden Moor between Bradford, Halifax and Keighley in west Yorkshire in 2007 and can be viewed here too. The moor was full of bilberry beneath the huge blades of a wind farm. Only ten years ago there were no Green Hairstreaks here set within a landscape of ancient coal workings, quarries, bell pits and days eyes as part of the huge excavations of the Silkstone seam which was closed in this area circa the 1850s. In this strange and profound landscape Green Haistreaks now fly in their thousands....

ROTTENBUGGER: aka David Attenborough

David Attenborough is a master of the black arts of pseudo conservation as uber-celebrity and veritable demiurge who, along with a few of the select, will save the planet. On the contrary, the guy is an 'unwordly' falsifier; a nature illusionist. All this means is that the eco movement is not only in desperate need of a critique of capitalism, it is also in need of a critique of the state along with all those other celebrities who wish to save the world through artistic posing.

Wilding Transformations & Great Expectations (Personal Diary 2) Written by The John Clare Collective

Wilding Transformations & Great Expectations. (Personal Diary 1) Written by The John Clare Collective

Nameless Wilding (A General Drift) Written by The John Clare Collective

Comments on Indian & York stone. Slave labour, aesthetic life style, quarrying and butterflies Written by David & Stuart Wise

2012: Creating the Common Blue on The Commons of Industrial and Urban Dereliction Written by David & Stuart Wise

2010; The Year of the White Letter in West Yorks Written by David & Stuart Wise

An eco/anti eco poster. Kingsnorth power station 2008 Written by David & Stuart Wise