Lesser purple emperor

I've never seen a purple emperor butterfly, even though it does occur in some places in southern England, so I was delighted to find this lesser purple emperor Apatura ilia feeding on the ground at the Austria/Hungary border.

It's very like our purple emperor, but slightly smaller and has pairs of circles on forewings as well as the hindwings.

From pictures in the books I'd imagined the wings would be coloured purple, but they are basically brown. The purple colour only appears when the light catches the wings at a certain angle, and could only be seen briefly. I was pleased to have caught the effect in this shot (even though I missed a wingtip).