Early Butterfies

Small Tortoiseshell Aglais urticae

I'm getting fed up with winter now and eagerly looking forward to Spring. The air smells different, the woods are full of birdsong, daffodils, crocuses and aconites are in bloom and surely it's only a matter of time before I see the first Brimstone.

To look forward you sometimes need to look back, so here are a few Butterfly photos taken over the last few years, although obviously not all in Spring. It is possible to see all these beauties in March if the weather is warm enough.

Brimstone Gonepterx rhamni

Orange-tip Anthocharis cardamines

Comma Polygonia c-album

Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta

Comma

I still haven't seen a Comma Polygonia c-album this year, but rather annoyingly my wife Indra has already seen several! She took this photo of a beautiful freshly emerged Comma and a bee having a Mexican stand-off on an old Hogweed stalk earlier in the month near Wilstone Reservoir. I'm not sure who won the argument! No doubt when I do eventually see a Comma, like buses they will come along in droves! Incidentally, my previous attempts at bee identification have been pretty futile so it would be great to hear from anyone who can put a name to this one.

Comma Polygonia c-album, Wilstone, 17/04/2011 (Indra Jackson)

Comma

Outside the weather is in a foul temper. The wind is gusting and hurling of rain angrily at the windows and venturing out to work seems madness. It's the sort of day when I wonder if my decision to quit an office job for a career in gardening was such a clever idea! Then I think back to the long, hot days of summer spent working in gardens full of birdsong, butterflies and buzzing insects and realise how lucky I am!

The ragged, torn outline and rapid gliding flight of the Comma Polygonia c-album is a common sight in gardens and orchards throughout the summer. They are especially fond of Budleias and Sedums and are often found feeding on rotten fruit along with other butterflies preparing to hibernate, such as Red Admirals. After hibernation Commas emerge as early as March and produce two broods, one in July and another in August or September. The photos below were taken in September at Bernwood, near Thame and show what I am fairly sure is a female Comma nectaring on Devilsbit Scabious Succisa pratensis. The sexes are tricky to tell apart but the outline of the female is slightly less ragged than the male and the marbled underside is plainer.

Comma Polygonia c-album on Devilsbit Scabious Succisa pratensis

Comma Polygonia c-album on Devilsbit Scabious Succisa pratensis

Comma Polygonia c-album on Devilsbit Scabious Succisa pratensis

This second brood butterfly is destined to hibernate on a branch or in buried in leaves and the dark, cryptic underside will camouflage it perfectly keeping it safe through the winter. The Comma takes it's name from the small white 'C' on the underside hind wing.

Comma Polygonia c-album f. hutchinsoni on Wild Teasle Dipsacus fullonum

In warm, dry early summers large numbers of the brighter form Hutchinsonii appear in July and mate to produce a second brood that emerges in late summer. As these butterflies do not hibernate and therefore less reliant on camouflage they are paler on both sides with a more variegated underside. The female Comma above, pictured on the dead flowerhead of a Wild Teasle Dipsacus fullonum in July, displays the paler markings and orange upperside of f. Hutchinsonii.

They are now so familiar in our gardens and woods that it's hard to believe that by the 1920's the Comma had declined so dramatically that it was almost extinct in Britain. Since then it's been all good news, with a recovery in numbers and a huge range expansion in the last twenty years.