People search for happiness in all the wrong places — but if you want a guaranteed source of true, giddy elation, then look in your local woodlands and scrubby bits of parks. The brimstone butterfly is just starting to emerge, and when you see its bright lime green wings flapping, you won’t be able to stop your spirits from lifting.
It’s not just that this is our first butterfly to emerge when the temperatures start to rise a little in spring. Or that the brimstone is strikingly pretty, moving in its own limelight through areas that are still grey and sleepy from winter. But that when they briefly come to rest, either to feed from early spring flowers, or to bathe in the thin sunlight, they look just like a freshly-sprung leaf, reminding us what is to come in the next few weeks. The yellow of those wings is the source of their name: brimstone is another word for sulphur.
The brimstone is one of a few British butterflies that hibernates over the winter, which is why we see them so much earlier than many others. They snooze under brambles and ivy until a little leap in the temperatures rings their alarm clock, and out they come. You may also spot peacock butterflies on warm spring days, along with red admirals, commas and small tortoiseshells. But the brimstone is one of those signs of spring treasured by naturalists along with the first wild blossom, the song of a chiffchaff and — if you’re very lucky —an adder or grass snake sunning itself.
They are common butterflies but tend to have their own favoured spots, so you’re rewarded for getting to know a local patch well. I always see one in the same place on Hampstead Heath as I pass the mixed bathing pond, and in a small clearing in my nearby woods in North Sheen.
Given the ongoing restrictions, there still isn’t much else to do anyway, but learning about the favourite local haunts of our native wildlife is the sort of lockdown activity that you’ll want to keep going when everything is open again.
