Orange tip

It's an unusual day when Gus and I take our lunch time walk along the estuary.  When we came to the end of the Rabbit Field, Gus asked as he always does, if we could do the Grubbins Wood extension.  Usually I say no, we will do the Ashmeadow extension on the way back.  But today, I thought "Why not?", and I was glad that we did, since as we were coming out of the wood, we flushed the first Orange Tip butterfly that I have seen this year.  

He settled on a bramble shoot and allowed me to take a few increasingly close photographs: a pristine male, perhaps freshly emerged, with powder blue hairs on his abdomen and thorax.  Here he's trying to conceal his orange flashes behind his cryptic underwings.

It's a widespread and reasonably common butterfly throughout much of the UK.   The caterpillars feed on crucifers like hedge garlic and lady's smock, and this taste for common plants helps to buck the trend of decline seen in so many of our butterflies.  Even so, and anecdotally speaking, they seem a lot less numerous than I remember from several decades ago, reflecting the general decline in our biodiversity in my life time.