Silver

Comfortably the most exciting butterfly I’ve ever seen on my patch, this Silver-washed Fritillary was basking on bracken at the edge of the woods. 

There have been two sightings of these in recent years further down the hill at the nature reserve, but this was the first time I’d personally laid eyes on one and records in West Yorkshire are generally very scattered and scarce. As a species they are known to go wandering well outside their typical range, particularly in better weather.

Earlier, I’d had an aborted attempt to get into work. The whole rail system locally was seized up for a couple of hours and by the time things were moving again I couldn’t get in in time for my scheduled meeting, so we switched that to Teams and I worked from home. Without that disruption I wouldn’t have been able to do my lunchtime walk locally, and I would have missed this sighting.

That’s now 34 of the 59 UK butterfly species that I’ve seen (in the UK). Still plenty to go.