Dancing pearls

I like the movement in these pearl-bordered fritillaries. They're extinct in Surrey so I had to go a bit further afield, to Bentley Wood on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, to find these on the bugle.

The more of these sites I visit, the more I learn about the murky underbelly of the butterfly world. Some people, I'm discovering, will go to extraordinary lengths to get a perfect picture and not all of it is what I'd call Kosher.

The hard core butterfly twitchers were out this morning since there'd been word of an aberration. I'm not an expert on such things but even I could see that the first extra I've added is not your regular pbf. It's a bit like stamp collecting where people get excited about a lack of perforations. It's different.

Every time the aberration popped out of the vegetation there was an unseemly Benny Hill-like line of butterfly photographers chasing it over the clearing. Standing and watching a while, however, it was clear the butterfly had a circuit. So it was better to wait somewhere on its route. 

In a few weeks the wood will host the annual gathering of Purple Emperor loonies. Banana skins will appear on fence posts. Evil-smelling fishy mixtures and worse will begin to appear on paths. Purple Emperor-induced madness doesn't last long but it puts the old March hare truly in the shade.