They say if you live long enough, you will get around to seeing everything eventually. But I saw something the other day I have never seen before.

We live in one of four quaint old cottages in Petersfield, and a central pathway to facilitate the emptying of the wheelie bins, links our back gardens. In effect, this means we have access to all of the gardens and flowers.

Today, that came in very handy, when a strange insect flew past us into our neighbour’s garden. It didn’t look familiar and I wondered if it could be a moth of some kind, as they’re not all a dull brown or grey, some moths are lovely.

It settled on a bush, so I went for my camera, but by the time I returned it had gone, and as I stood there feeling strangely bereft, it flitted past my nose and on to the next garden with us in hot pursuit.

When it settled again, I managed to get close enough to get a few close up photographs, only to discover another one nearby. They were definitely butterflies and ones I didn’t recognise, which in itself was odd, as I have been on this earth for 71 years and spent most of that time out of doors. How could I not know what these were? Maybe they were rare…

The first site I looked up, had all the butterflies of the UK in a row, and this one was not there. Eventually tracked them down and they turned out to be Gatekeeper butterflies, and really quite beautiful. Well, at least one of them was. Unfortunately, the other one had several lumps missing from its wings, which was a shame.
Then they don’t usually live long, do they, which is a shame too…

The day after we saw them, there was news item about how some of our UK butterflies were on the verge of extinction… guess which one was at the top of the list?
The Gatekeeper butterfly…