You can tell from today's top picture that we're not going to be dealing with UK moths in this post; behold the glories of a Swallowtail, the UK's largest native butterfly but very seldom to be seen outside its few remaining sanctuaries in the East Anglian Fens.
That is the opposite of the case in Portugal where Penny and I have just had a marvellous week, staying in the countryside of the Lower Alentejo, close to the mighty Atlantic Ocean beaches from which Vasco da Gama & Co set sail.
This Swallowtail was roaming majestically around the ruins of the Roman town of Mirobriga on the edge of the mediaeval settlement of Santiago do Cacem where a bevy of other butterflies, notably a bright orange one resembling a fiery Brimstone, were swooping around the fine hilltop castle, sadly out of range of my iPad Mini's lens. The Swallowtail was more accommodating. It took me for a modest but sun-drenched stalk before posing perfectly on what appeared to be a dead flower. Dead or not, it occupied the butterfly's attention for a good five minutes.
Hence the top picture; otherwise I would have had to be content with the second or third where you may have to play 'Find the Butterfly' for quite a while - I've added a couple of enlarged details to give you a hand. Back at our base, between the inland town of Cercal and the pretty estuary port of Vila Nova de Milfontes, I spent further drowsy spells pursuing the somewhat jumbo versions of Hedge and Meadow Browns shown below.
2 comments:
I occasionally see swallowtails flopping about here in the US. A while ago I rescued a gigantic bird-dropping larva from the ground, so they are probably
breeding here as well.
I don't like butterflies very much, because they often fly in dizzying patterns (supposedly an anti-bird defense).
Hi there - I find that small UK butterflies jink, middle-sized ones float and large ones swoop. From my somewhat random observations here, birds rarely take any of them in flight, but when I'm examining the moths in the morning, I have had robins in particular swoop in like Spitfires on any moth foolish enough to stagger off through the air rather than wait for me to hide it under a bush. All best M
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