Comma Butterfly (Nymphalis c-album)

Took an early walk down the local nature reserve.  It follows the line of an old canal extension that used to serve the local colliery.  It has now become landlocked.  

I hoped to capture some of the water wildlife but the canal was still in shadow from the trees that grow up on the edge of the footpath.  Instead this butterfly obliged, warming itself in the early morning sunshine (although I did have to get on tip toes to shoot over the vegetation in the foreground).  Funnily enough, later in the day, while sitting in the garden, the same variety of butterfly landed on my shin and basked in the sun for a few moments.

I actually combined two shots for this image.  I was using the 300mm f4 and the depth of field meant I could either get the head, antenna and front wings in focus, or the body and rear wings.  I can remember the difficulty in doing this sort of thing in the past, but Photoshop provided an acceptable result just by aligning and blending the two images.  We really are spoilt these days.