The tattered pennant of a speckled wood butterfly remained still as the wind roared overhead. With bits of wing missing due to bird attacks or batterings from the weather, the butterfly had been beating the bounds of its own territory until the wind cut up rough.
Speckled wood butterflies, Pararge aegeria tircis, have brown, leaf-like wings illuminated by yellow-cream patches that match the dappled shadows they inhabit. Before the early 20th century they were rare and localised, but here they have become the commonest butterflies of the woodland edge. Dryads are not much interested in flowers but are drinkers of honeydew produced by aphids feeding on leaves in the treetops.
Up there, storm wraiths thrashed through their northerly migration. The air crackled with a power only visible in its effects: snapping branches, spinning ash keys, beech mast and lime seeds, flying leaves winnowed into twisting devils or flowing waves, tree trunks shaken to find ones to uproot. Even the crazy ravens that were riding the winds the day before were staying out of it now. A fleeting sunspot in fallen leaves under the shelter of trees along the path lay within the butterfly’s territory, which he alone defended.
Speckled woods fly from March to September and have two broods, sometimes a third in October or November in a favourable year. So, despite the lateness of the season and the probability that available females, who only mate once in their lifetime, will have laid their eggs on grasses by now, the butterfly had not abandoned the prospect of fathering a late brood and was ready to spring into the air if another trespassed into his spotlight.
There would be more males than females around and, although they were likely to be as knackered as he was, skirmishes for ownership of the ephemeral dapples would still break out were it not for the weather. Perhaps this storm would close down the season for speckled woods, but, even though he was falling apart, this one was living in the now of a golden moment – before the deluge, before the tree blew down, something perfect and full of promise.
