The year's first butterflies

Tomorrow sees me debating the merits of moths and butterflies with my excellent colleague Patrick Barkham at the Guardian.

As an omen, possibly of doom, I saw my first butterflies of 2012 yesterday. Penny and I were down in Oxfordshire and the weather was like July, as indeed it was the day before in Manchester where I was working. I didn't have the moth trap, although it will be all bundled up and London-bound later today; but the floodlights on the lovely old Thames bridge by the lovely and friendly Rose Revived formed an unofficial one, as per my rather unenlightening picture here.

There were only a few tinies jinking about when we had a look at 11pm. But yesterday morning in the allotments at Longworth, the butterflies were about. A Brimstone was energetically exploring, a Small Tortoiseshell swooped around the churchyard and a Small or possibly Green-veined White disappeared down a well-kept ginnel past an admonitory notice about dog dirt. Butterflies have a deplorable fondness for faeces, but there's quite enough in the fields for them.

Three years ago, we were engulfed in flocks of Brimstones not far from here, at Tadpole bridge a little higher up the Thames. I wasn't clever enough to get a picture of yesterday's, but here's a Tadpole one. Some say that the term 'butterfly' comes from the Brimstone, as the 'butter-coloured fly' which is often the earliest on the wing in the UK. Since this a moth blog, here's a little picture of the Brimstone Moth too, right, (although don't show it to Patrick, because in this case the butterfly is clearly the winner).