Rather smaller rocks, from back at the end of March 2024. The workers from the local commune showed up shortly after this photo and asked if we were all right - evidently the rocks had come down the night before. There were green hairstreaks and black-eyed blues further up the track.

Is this Pieris mannii? Photographed in a park in central Trier (western Germany) last week.

Most of the ones I have seen have been fourreaux, though I think I have seen one in Spain and have once come across the case on the Somerset Levels. Perhaps like many species it likes sunny weather and dislikes the damp.

Male Brimstone through the garden just now. He may have a chance of meeting his own offspring. This is the one species to be having a really good year here in what's generally been a very poor spring for butterflies.

Mouse Moth would be a good candidate.

I collected a bunch of fallen oak twigs earlier in the month, hoping to pick up some Purple Hairstreak larvae. Instead I got this formidable beast - Twin-spotted Quaker moth, Anorthoa munda.

From Huelva province, Spain, late last month. Here's an Orange-tip egg on Tower Mustard Arabis glabra, a common enough plant around the Mediterranean but a rarity in Britain. It is, however, used here as a foodplant as well.

Pollination in action, two years ago in Dordogne. Note the orchid pollinia on the left-hand butterfly's proboscis (the butterflies are, I think, parthenoides)

Dizzy Skippers, imo.

All winters and springs are different, and each species reacts in a different way. This year the orange-tips are out early but the sallow blossom is running late.

Whilst we're talking snakes, does anyone know if putting corrugated metal down for reptile surveys can be used to create bare ground for the establishment of butterfly foodplants?

More Orange-tips...

I like the way Minnie's alert ear directs us to the butterfly.

The Orange-tips have started to emerge.

Same here in Somerset - only one vanessid to date (unidentifiable but flight pattern suggested Small Tort). A few Brimstones about. Opportunities for butterflies are few and far between amid the endless rain.

Male Brimstone in central Exeter on Monday.

I have seen butterflies. Admittedly, I had to go to the south coast of France for them...

I wouldn't dare walk in the woods round here. Far too slippery.

Thanks Pete and Roger! If we’re both still around, Roger, I look forward to losing the bet! When I was 21, in the winter of ‘85-6, I watched Halley’s comet creep through the constellations. When it faded from sight in the spring, I said, ‘See you again!’ That requires me to live to 97… Guy Belated ...

Thanks Wurzel. Hopefully the Glanvilles will still be there in 2024 - in truth I'm surprised they have lasted that long, as their populations seem to struggle to survive on chalk downland. I've seen Marsh Fritillaries a couple of times at Priddy, and they certainly used to be resident there 25 years...