Most co-operatively, as I had specifically gone looking for it, my 22nd butterfly species for 2026 appeared flitting up and down among the long grasses and wildflowers of a local meadow on Sunday 7 June, a breezy day but warm enough in sheltered places. And then another appeared, and a third, and, more distantly, a fourth, though I only managed to get this one photo. As with many butterfly species, the males emerge before the females and then spend their time racing madly around looking for females to mate with and sprinkling their pheromones on to the vegetation. This is, of course, a Meadow brown (Maniola jurtina).
And the third, on Sunday 10th, once again appeared as if conjured up out of thin air, this time on the grass below the National Coastwatch building near the coastal path that runs along Portland’s west cliffs.
The one time I actually went looking for Small blues, and spent two hours walking almost every small path through the Broadcroft Butterfly Reserve, where these butterflies are supposed to live, I saw none. Which only made me even more grateful to have experienced the previous three totally unexpected sightings.
