Irelandscapes | Small Tortoiseshell Garden Butterfly (N Irish wildlife scenes) @Irelandscapes | Uploaded September 2023 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Filmed today in the late Summer sunshine. This butterfly is a common visitor to our gardens, in Spring and Autumn. Yet it's beauty never ceases to amaze. Perhaps because we don't get quite close enough, and for long enough, to examine the amazingly fine detail in the design of those wings, or the soft fur on it's body, and those striped antennae. In this footage we are able to show all of that, and both sides of the wings. It's building bodyweight in fat for a purpose. They will hibernate through the Winter, beginning the end of this month, and have a 50% chance at least of making it to breeding season again next year, even through the coldest of our annual temperatures.
Sometimes in Winter you will find a Tortoiseshell in the corner of a garden shed, or the eves of your attic. You see them, a surprise guest, silent and still and a little jaded by settled dust. Hibernating until the longer, warmer days return. You smile and close the door and wish you little lodger well until that time.