Speckled Wood
Pararge aegeria · Butterflies
Speckled Wood
The Cotswolds, 13 June 2025
A Speckled Wood in a patch of sunlight in a Cotswold wood in June, which is exactly where it lives: the dappled rides and edges of woodland across Britain and Europe, holding a spot of sun. It is one of the few British butterflies that has spread in the last fifty years rather than declined.
Cream spots on brown rather than the reverse, which is this species' own version of dappled woodland light translated onto a wing. Speckled Woods are unusually territorial for a butterfly. A male will hold a patch of sunlit ground against other males for as long as he can defend it, and two of them spiralling upward through a shaft of light is a fight, not a dance. The holder nearly always wins.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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