Butterflies

The last butterflies are enjoying the warm sun of late September. As I was scything the grass and weeds in the orchard, peacock and tortoiseshell were flying over the orchard weeds. As always I left patches of nettles, which are a favourite foodstuff for caterpillars. Of course this has nothing to do with how hard scything is. In the woods when I was mushrooming, there were brimstones and dappled brown butterflies flittering in the strands of light descending through the leaves. But the nights are getting cold, soon the butterflies will be arriving in the cellar and barn looking for a place to overwinter.

My favourite is the little blue (above), which in the summer collected in huge shimmering crowds on the sand by the swimming pond. It is very special for all my family, in that when a beloved aunt died over ten years ago we noticed the little blue everywhere. It was and is forever her butterfly. Strangely enough when we moved into her house, we found that it clearly was a favourite of hers before she died, because there were pictures of it around the house.

Czech Butterflies

The butterflies that grace the Czech Republic are more varied and more frequent than those we get in England. Our garden is full of them dancing in the late summer sun, as I sit in my plastic chair watching. Some are quite plain – butterflies from the woods in a range of browns and subtle dappledness. Other are lighter - large and small brimstones, frittilaries, swallowtails, others are familiar like the many peacocks and tortoiseshells. I pursue them with camera in hand, but rarely get the photo I want.

Of all them, this beauty is my favourite and not just because it posed so obligingly. It is large (much larger than butterflies I see in my Cotswold garden) its wings are dark brown, edged with cream, and decorated with a line of turquoise flecks so intense they glow in the sunshine. Its beauty is subtle not flashy, an classy gem of a butterfly. The book says it's a Camberwell Beauty – well, I lived and worked in South East London and I never saw this butterfly anywhere there and certainly not in Camberwell.