First butterfly!

Lovely warm sunshine in the garden today to welcome the first butterfly of the year - a Small Tortoiseshell.  Not often is is possible to photograph a butterfly nectaring on Mezereon (a very early flowering shrub) but this early spring-like weather has made this photo possible.

I remember in the Moomintroll books there was a Moomin proverb about the first butterfly in Spring:

'If the first butterfly seen is white it will be an ordinary year, if yellow it will be a wonderful year, but if brown...well, best not to plan anything!'

Small Tortoiseshells have some yellow (hooray!) but also some brown (boo!) - it seems it will be a good year with some bad bits (or the other way around!)

In the Moomin book, the first butterfly Moomintroll, Sniff and Snufkin saw was....Golden!  They had a really fabulous summer!  Great read - must look it our for the grandkids!