This beauty appeared in our garden this afternoon, even more welcome because, despite wall-to-wall sunshine, light winds, and temperatures into the tropical low twenties ('tropical' by NE Scotland standards), the only butterflies we'd seen all day were one red admiral and one unidentified white, neither of which stayed to enjoy the butterfly feast we thought we'd laid on.
It's a fritillary of some sort, perhaps pearl-bordered, a species which we've seen recently at Littleferry and up in the hills on our walk on Thursday, in each case, a lone individual.
It spent some time feeding on one of the ten buddleia we've planted in our garden to attract butterflies and other insects, which means that, mathematically, next year, we'll have to have the garden buried under buddleia to see a reasonable number of butterflies.
Happily, Thursday's walk also produced a few butterflies, including this ringlet....
....a rather moth-eaten male common blue, and....
....this very smart female common blue.
The weather forecast is for a continuation of this warm weather so we hope that the number of butterflies we see will now increase from the depressing levels we've had over the last few months.
The fritillary is more likely to be a dark green, female.
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