small tortoiseshells

I have identified one of the mystery butterflies in the garden as a small tortoiseshell, Aglais urticae urticae, with the help of an excellent website, UK Butterflies.  It's a bit of a cheat really to even give you the link, since if you wanted to know more about butterflies you could find it for yourself in about five seconds with the aid of Google.  It lists the species found in the UK, tells you which ones are flying this week (though not necessarily where you are), and has a comprehensive page of information about every species.

I recognised the small tortoiseshell from its photograph, having looked hard at one that perched in front of me for a reasonable length of time, and made a mental note of the bold yellow and black stripes up the leading edge of the front wing, and the row of brilliant blue dots along the trailing edge of the rear one.  It turns out that numbers in the UK have declined in recent years: they have always fluctuated from year to year, but now the UK population is being parasitised  by the larvae of a fly which feeds on the larval and pupal stages of the butterfly.  How depressing, though I suppose the fly is as intrinsically interesting as the butterfly, just not as highly valued by most people, because it is not pretty.

Adult tortoiseshells hibernate over the winter.  I didn't know that, and browsing around the UK Butterflies site made me realise how singularly little I know about their life cycles.  I'd have thought they could overwinter equally well as pupae, but according to the phenology table, all the small tortoiseshells have emerged by mid September, with only the adult form (or imago) persisting through the winter.  The name gives a clue to the favoured food plant, nettles.  I was brought up to believe that nettles were essential for butterflies, and in honour of the small tortoiseshells (and because the label on the glyphosate bottle says to spray new growth in spring) I will leave it until then to start spraying off the nettles which have sprung up all along the side of the wood on the way to the compost bin.  I feel there will still be enough for the butterflies elsewhere in the garden.

UK Butterflies has a Twitter account, @ukbutterflies.  I don't use Twitter, having no desire to follow a condensed running commentary on life from Stephen Fry or any other celebrity, while if I wanted to communicate with anyone I knew I'd send them an email, or write to them, or in an emergency ring them up.  I'm not even sure whether any of my friends have Twitter accounts.  If they have, they haven't invited me to contact them using that medium.  But I could see the point of it for a specialist interest group like lepidopterists.  How useful to be able to post a picture of a butterfly you are trying to identify in an open forum where people with above average interest in the subject will see your query, and can respond.

There are many more species of moth in the UK than there are of butterflies.  I know enthusiasts who set out their traps at night, luring moths in with light, but in general people find butterflies far sexier.  They fly by day instead of night, do not invade your house after dark and flap around the light bulbs, making an off-putting scratchy noise, and they are generally prettier.  A French au pair we had when I was about twelve was afraid of moths, and from her I learnt to be scared of them too, for a time, but who ever heard of anyone who was scared of butterflies?