Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly

It was a beautiful and very classic English summer's day, a cornflower blue sky and puffs of white cumulus cloud. The white lilac has flowered for the first time and it was a magnet for butterflies.
The Small Tortoiseshell is one of my favourites. I remember as a boy sitting for what seemed like hours on a patch of grass known as "the triangle", watching the Small Tortoiseshells sunning themselves as they perched on flowering thistles. There is something heavenly to me about the little blue crescents around the outer margin of the wings, like looking into the limitless blue of the sky.