Butterflies a rare sight in April

IT’S quite unusual to see butterflies on the wing in April in this country but I’ve seen quite in recent weeks.

There was a small tortoiseshell, looking a bit dull and tattered. It was obviously an insect hatched last year that had been tempted out of hibernation by a spell of spring sunshine. But then I saw two red admirals and they were quite different — glowing with newly-minted colour.

I suspect some of the minor details of the life-cycle of the red admiral in Ireland remain to be discovered. They are usually described as migratory butterflies that arrive here from Morocco, with an intervening generation in Spain or France. But they certainly breed in Ireland and, according to JM Harding’s authoritative book Discovering Irish Butterflies: “it is possible that some over-winter here successfully”. So are red admirals in mid-April very early migrants or are they over-wintered specimens? The other butterfly in my garden the other day was an orange tip. This was less unusual because they are normally the first species on the wing every year. But this was a female and the males usually show up first. The female, of course, doesn’t have those bright orange tips to her fore-wings, she has black ones and she is slightly larger.