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Jean Lawman considers the life cycle of a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly.
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It was too late. To our horror, the fragile winged insect had been sucked into the tube of the Hoover; an accident caused by trying to do the job quickly. To be fair, it wasn’t very conspicuous with its wings folded tightly together showing only the dark brown beneath the hind-wing. The beautiful, bright colours of the upper-wing were totally concealed. Having recently expended all its energy feeding to build up fat reserves for the winter instead of indulging in courtship behaviour, the butterfly had come into the house to hibernate. It had chosen a shady corner on the skirting board in a cool room; an ideal place if it hadn’t been for a rare spot of house cleaning. There, with a lowered metabolic rate to conserve energy, it would remain immobile until increasing day-length caused it to stir and become active again, probably in March. Then was the time to fly and find a mate.
We ripped open the bag; to our amazement, there it was fanning its wings in a small cloud of dust, a survivor obviously. It was a Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae); the most common butterfly found hibernating in houses. Still a perfect specimen, its wings glowed fiery red, generously marked with black and cream bands, but most attractively, the dark borders were braided with a series of powder blue crescents. The plain coloured under-wing helps conceal the butterfly from predators -but gave no protection from Hoovers, as we demonstrated - whilst a flash of bright colour from the open wings is irresistible to potential mates and enables the butterfly to recognise its own species.
A small tortoiseshell butterfly.
As for the name ‘Tortoiseshell’, those striking colours and the roughly square, dark and light markings certainly resemble the markings on the shell of that animal. Even the delicate scalloping effect on the under-wing is reminiscent of a shell. So say the French too with their name La Petite Tortue - Little Tortoise. The Germans however have other ideas with their Kleiner Fuchs – Little Fox, an obvious reference to the red ground colour.
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