Comma, Polygonia c-album, on bramble The warm sun quickly dried vegetation, after an overnight shower. I searched the brambles- late flowers, ripening fruit and luscious blackberries. A tapping came from the hazel beyond, a nuthatch perhaps. Hoverflies were nectaring on bramble flowers. A comma butterfly settled on a blackberry. Its wings are ragged, like leaf-margins. Colours run and blur, seeping like blood from dark blotches. Lurid and maculate as bramble leaves in autumn. The bramble patch is all thorns: blackthorn, rose, bramble and hawthorn.
The image top left is a comma butterfly on Farrer's Allotment and it's a fresher specimen. This morning's butterfly has some damage to the hind-wing. But I had the opportunity to photograph it to show the shape of fore and hind wings, and the ragged outline its wings make.
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