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Hi, I'm Adrian
Hoskins, entomologist, wildlife photographer, creator of
this website, and natural history tour leader.
My
partner Emily Halsey and I currently live and work in the
entomological desert that is Leicester. Both of us
however, motivated by our joint passion for butterflies,
spent most of our lives in southern England. This corner
of the country is an area particularly rich in butterflies
due to the diverse habitats which include broad-leaved
forests, heaths, chalk grasslands, meadows, riverbanks,
and coastal habitats.
My passion for butterflies has taken me on many travels,
As a lad I explored most of Britain by motorbike. Later I
spent 5 or 6 years travelling around Europe, with a
particular fondness for the beautiful French Alps.
I had however always dreamt about visiting the tropics, so
in 1990 I saved long and hard to join a
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Adrian Hoskins & Emily Halsey |
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"once in a lifetime" safari in Tanzania. The idea was to see and
photograph the cheetahs, lions, elephants and rhinos, but I found
that I was taking more photos of butterflies than of mammals
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The
urge to explore took me the following year to
Trinidad where I found myself
awestruck by the rainforest and it's infinite wonders. I saw my
first Morphos, Daggerwings, Glasswings, Heliconiines and Owl
butterflies - species that I had dreamt about since childhood. I
found the whole rainforest experience overwhelming - the hummingbirds
and
oropendolas, the
haunting siren wail of cicadas, the high pitched chirping of
thousands of tiny frogs, and best of all my "discovery" of the incredible
moth
Siculodes aurorula illustrated below, were things that
will stay in my mind until the day I die - irreplaceable memories
that make material things in life pale into insignificance.
Siculodes
aurorula
THYRIDIDAE, Arima
valley, Trinidad, April 1992
For the last 20 years I've been
very privileged to be able to spend time studying and photographing
the stunning butterflies found in the rainforests of
Costa Rica, Trinidad, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Borneo,
India, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Ghana. I organise and
lead
butterfly watching tours
to many of these fabulous regions. A selection of
Trip Reports are
available.
My butterfly "life list", swollen by
recent trips to Peru and Ghana currently stands at 2365
species. I go to
great lengths contacting
numerous eminent taxonomists to ensure that all species I record are accurately
identified. Accumulating
species lists however is only a tiny part of my interest. What excites me
most is capturing the beauty and character of each species on camera, and discovering as much as I can about their
fascinating behaviour and
ecology.
Tropical rainforests are full of beautiful butterflies, but
rainy Britain still has much to offer !
This in my humble opinion is the most beautiful butterfly on
Earth - the Peacock Inachis io
Despite my love of the
tropics, there are few things more precious to me than the pleasure of
rambling in the heaths and ancient woodlands of
the New Forest in Hampshire, strolling across the chalk grasslands
of Dorset, exploring the beautiful woodlands of West Sussex, Lancashire
and Cumbria, or visiting the stunning landscapes of the Scottish
Highlands.
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"Why
are you interested in butterflies ?"
I'm not
"interested" in butterflies, I love them. I cannot find
words adequate to describe my passion for these incredibly
beautiful creatures, so perhaps
the best way of answering the question is to quote the
legendary explorer and naturalist Alfred Russell
Wallace, who in his book The Malay Archipelago wrote
the following :
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"During
my very first walk into the forest at Batchian, I had seen
sitting on a leaf out of reach, an immense butterfly of a
dark colour marked with white and yellow spots. I could
not capture it as it flew away high up into the forest,
but I at once saw that it was a female of a new species of
Ornithoptera or "bird-winged
butterfly," the pride of the Eastern tropics.
I was very anxious to get
it and to find the male, which in this genus is always of
extreme beauty. During the two succeeding months I only
saw it once again, and shortly afterwards I saw the male
flying high in the air at the mining village. I had begun
to despair of ever getting a specimen as it seemed so rare
and wild; till one day, about the beginning of January, I
found a beautiful shrub with large white leafy bracts and
yellow flowers, a species of
Mussaenda, and saw one of these noble insects
hovering over it, but it was too quick for me, and flew
away.
The next day I went
again to the same shrub and succeeded in catching a
female, and the day after a fine male. I found it to be as
I had expected, a perfectly new and most magnificent
species, and one of the most gorgeously coloured
butterflies in the world. Fine specimens of the male are
more than seven inches across the wings, which are velvety
black and fiery orange, the latter colour replacing the
green of the allied species.
The beauty and brilliancy
of this insect are indescribable, and none but a
naturalist can understand the intense excitement I
experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out
of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began
to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt
much more like fainting than I have done when in
apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest
of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what
will appear to most people a very inadequate cause."
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The
butterfly discovered and described by Wallace "Ornithoptera
croesus" is illustrated below
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"Why
did you create this website ?"
Firstly I wanted a receptacle for my photographs and knowledge - a
means of storing what I have seen and learned, and passing it on
to share with others.
Secondly I wanted a tool to promote the conservation of
butterflies, moths and their habitats - particularly the wonderful
rainforests of Amazonia, Africa and south-east Asia. I hope that
by encouraging an interest in butterflies via my photos and
articles, that web visitors will also feel the
urge to protect these incredible habitats which are disappearing
so rapidly from our planet.
Details of how you can help can be
found on the
Rainforest
and
Save the Rainforests pages.
More
information about my own aims and philosophy, please see the
Code of Practice page, which covers
subjects including collecting,
introductions, site publicity and ecotourism.
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