The Aristocrats

I was looking at pinned whites, blues, skippers and aristocrats in Saffron Walden museum. The faded specimens from the museum's own collection were part of a traveling exhibition celebrating British butterflies. A boy was sitting at a computer customising a winged template. An entire wall of children's butterfly paintings flapped its wings.

It was a proper summer holiday museum afternoon, pouring with rain. Maybe tomorrow some of those kids will be out with cameras, 'collecting.' It's going to be heatwave hot again, so there should be all sorts of species on the wing.

                               Photo by Jo Sinclair

I was fascinated by the many brimstones I spotted tucked away from the wind when I went on a butterfly safari on the Roman Road at the weekend. Wings folded like leaves, they were very subtle indeed. The red admirals and peacocks,  part of the  'aristocrat' group of nymphalidae seemed very loud in comparison.

                                                                                                          Photos by Jo Sinclair

 There were small tortoiseshells, painted ladies, whites, and a smidgeon of blue: the small blue, very fast and very tiny. Then something fast and exotic that we'd never seen before caught our eye. Dark yellow, rapid and evasive, it turned out to be a clouded yellow. It dodged my camera with ease.

Back at home I clipped dead blooms off the buddleia to keep the flowers - and butterflies - coming. While rinsing out a jar of honey, I thought of putting the dregs out on a saucer for a nectar feeding station. It had been sipped dry by the end of the day, though I wasn't around to see what had had it.