Orange-tip butterfly, Anthocaris cardamines

Male orange-tip butterfly on garlic mustard 7 May

I know a bank where garlic mustard grows, sheltered from wind off the North Sea, and by mid-day the flowers are in full sun. Surely today will be a butterfly day, at last, as that north- north- east wind eases.  Orange-tip butterflies have been on my wish list since the day I found one sheltering from fine rain beneath Jack-by-the-hedge, Garlic mustard, at Waitby Greenriggs. So long ago I was without a camera.  This morning there are white butterflies on the wing amidst white flowers and I follow their flight over garlic mustard, over nettles and brambles.

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A green-veined white alights in a puzzling disposition  of wings.  Two butterflies mating. Sunlight blazes, dark spaces between the leaves.  Now is the time for careful, studied photographs, when they’re preoccupied.  When, at last, they fly they are  conjoined and I follow them until they settle again.  I’ve seen dragonflies hitching a lift when they’re mating, but not green-veined whites.  There’s a fresh brood  here in the garlic mustard.
Not far from home, I return to download images. But this is the day, the perfect day, so I return for those elusive orange-tips. Surely they’re here.  I glimpse the tell-tale orange on a male which closes its wings and settles on a leaf to show the intricate pattern of its under-wing. Perfect. The cryptic colouring is exquisite. It’s designed to hide the butterfly from predators, to conceal. And you see how effective it is as pattern and colour merge into leaf and all the colours of a hedgerow. They lurk, I discover.

Underwing of male orange-tip, showing intricate pattern and cryptic colouring

I meet Steve and we chat a while. Home again- I haven’t had breakfast and it’s now well into the afternoon.  More downloading of images, but I need to show the outer-wing, the eponymous orange-tip. So I return once more and there is Steve again and he helps me track the butterflies, fast and erratic in flight, rarely settling.  I take several rapid shots of a fully open orange-tip, not sure if I have the pictures.  As Steve heads off home I call after him,’ send them my way if you see any more’.   Moments later he calls me to an orange-tip come down into the grass – a male with wings half-open to show upper and under-wing together.  Then it is gone in wavering flight over the bank and I’m home for the latest breakfast I’ve ever had.

Tomorrow the forecast is for yet more fine weather, if rather colder.  I’ve seen the female orange-tip and she’s my objective.
I’ve watched the green-veined whites mating, I know when their caterpillars should appear.  I must encourage my friends to look out for them. They’re close to home and the virtue of a local patch is the ease of frequent monitoring visits.
Home again, I hear more of those lovely lenticular clouds, of the Helm Wind.
Sunday 7 May was my super -Sunday. I came home overwhelmed with images from perfect light: redstart, stonechat, orange-tip and green-veined white butterflies.  Those redstart images are the culmination of years of studying habit and habitat. The white-beam is iconic, year after year redstart sing from its slender branches.  Same tree, same redstart lineage. I wonder how many generations I’ve seen.