Last year I tended to take a lot of pictures of butterflies
on our land using my phone. I would always have my phone in my back pocket
whenever I was working outside and it was easy to take a quick record shot,
rather than running to the house to get my camera, only to discover that the
butterfly had then flown away!
Imagine my horror earlier this year when I discovered that
all my pictures had disappeared from my phone. Luckily Google Photos
automatically backs up every picture I take and so I have spent many evenings
sifting through them and downloading the better pictures onto my laptop.
Amongst the pictures I was keen to save were some of a hutchinsoni form of the Comma that I saw
last August. This is a lighter form of the Comma, Polygonia c-album, which it is thought is a result of the
caterpillar developing while the day length is increasing. i.e before mid-summers
day.
This form goes on to breed again the same year. Normally, in
Scotland, the Comma just has one brood a year. The double brood is more common
in England. This is the first time I have seen this form of Comma, but
apparently a few have been seen in southern Scotland in the last few years.
Possibly another sign of the climate changing, or maybe just a result of the
lovely weather we had last spring.
Here is the normal form of the Comma.
And in contrast here is an interesting dark Comma I saw a
few weeks later. This gave the impression of being a purple butterfly when it
was flying.
Also, in August I found a cluster of Small
Tortoiseshell caterpillars.
Here the
Small Tortoiseshell, Aglais urticae, is normally single
brooded, but further south there are two generations a year. I have never found
caterpillars that late in the year and this was definitely a second brood.
Again, probably the result of the great spring. I reared one of the
caterpillars, which emerged from its chrysalis on 11th September, very much
later than the usual early July.
