European Gardening: Male Gatekeeper, 0 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
Every day I am stood amongst hundreds of butterflies. I see new ones which I think are a different type, then discover they are another one with a huge variation in colour.

There are a lot of Speckled Wood butterflies now, I though I was seeing something else. There was one 'kissing' another on the ground, it was laid on it's side and I didn't see the second one until I investigated. The top one flew, the bottom one was on it's side with wings folded, it looked really much smaller and paler on it's under-wing. It looked dead, so I went to pick it up and it flew! They must have been in a mating ritual, I had my camera, it's a shame I didn't snap them.

This one I was convinced was a male, it's only been around a short while and it looked like the one that was over the smaller one today. It had a really glistening brownish-gold sheen to the upper wings on top. Neither of them look like the others I have had around! I find the same with other butterflies, the size and colour differences are wide ranged, even the shapes differ in one species.