Your i-D Please

                                                                                                                                                                                                      Photo by Jo Sinclair

I managed to catch up with a clouded yellow today, probably because it was hungry. It was flying fast along a rather barren footpath near my home and had very few nectar plants to land on, but if there was something to sip it made a pit stop. The scanty path is dog-trodden, with little herbage between cornfields and hedge, though only about two kilometres from the Magog Down, a wildflower oasis.

Trying to get the correct i-D can be frustrating. The clouded yellow is a burnt umber yellow-orange in flight, with dark wing markings. At rest it is quite primrose. What you need from a guidebook or wall-chart is the male and female of the species, and two different aspects such as flight and rest - wings open and closed. Online searches such as Google Images and i spot are handy to scroll through, but for butterflies I have found UK Butterflies. This is an interactive site that is keenly and expertly 'building a community of responsible butterfly enthusiasts'. It's both reliably scientific and conversational.

I might make a trip to the very tempting and comprehensive natural history sections of Heffers in Cambridge and Toppings in Ely.