Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes July 23

They are both speckled wood butterflies. The one with the white spots I photographed in my own garden here in Sussex. The one with the deep orange spots I photographed in my son's garden in Portugal.

The Sussex one is identified by the latin name Pararge aegeria tircis. The southern race is called P.a.aegeria. In other words, it is sort of centred about the Aegian. It is much darker, but behaves much the same as ours.

You will find them in that dappled shade around the edges of woodland. The dots on the wings almost resemble the dappled back of the fallow deer or the roe deer kid before winter moult.

I think they are gorgeous with all that cryptic pattern which makes them vanish when they go up to roost. And they are such a faithful butterfly to one particular place.

For 32 years I have recorded butterflies on a weekly transect walk of five miles and the speckled wood always turns up dead on cue for time and place. I can be almost certain to see one basking on that little sunny patch of path near the gate as I can one next to my chair on the flagstones at tea time throughout the summer.

Of course they are not the same ones each time because the Browns only live for a few days. New ones come along all the time and find these ancient suntraps to their liking. Like all the Brown family they eat grass. The caterpillars that is.

The adults just nectar on almost any wild flower such as bramble, marjoram or hawkbits, if these are close to shade. In the West Country and Wales the speckled wood flies happily over open moors and cliffs.

There is a giant edition of the speckled wood found on Snowdonia, and on Rhum the subspecies P.a.t. oblita occurs. The Isle of Scilly have their own special subspecies too, called insula. But back in 1730 it was just called "The Enfield Eye", later changed to "Wood Argus".

In 1766 Moses Harris changed the name to its present name which seems to suit everyone. Look for it in Denmark and Russia too, and on into Central Asia if you ever go that far. I always expect it in Portugal, near that little gate in the cork oak forest where the wryneck has a nest.

This feature first appeared in the West Sussex Gazette July 23. To read it first, buy the WSG every Wednesday.