The brown Argus is widespread butterfly in England and Wales. Photograph: Butterfly Conservation
Back home in Somerset the grass in the back garden, if not quite as high as an elephant's eye, is in dire need of mowing. It's the usual story: while we've been away on holiday, the sun has shone back home. On the bright side, the back lawn - rapidly turning into a hay meadow - now provides a much-needed home for butterflies.
Incredibly, in the two years since we moved down here from London I have seen 19 different species - about one in three of all Britain's butterflies - in our garden. The latest addition is a brown Argus, a little gem of a creature, named after the delicate eye-like spots on its underwings. As a novice I need to double-check the insect's ID, so I grab my trusty butterfly net and incarcerate him for a few minutes while I look him up in the book.
I then phone butterfly expert Matthew Oates, who confirms that brown Argus is one of our few recent butterfly success stories, spreading away from limestone grassland and into other areas - like my back garden.
Butterflies had a terrible time last year because of the bad weather, and numbers are definitely down on the Somerset Levels, as they seem to be everywhere else. Fingers crossed for a fine, warm summer to make up for last year's downpours.
