Late butterfly!

Wednesday
After a cold frosty start, the morning warmed nicely under clear blue skies and sunshine. Today is the warmest day we’re going to see for a while, so we headed out to Rowe Woods to do some hiking. I took several photos of colourful autumn leaves, but then we spotted this Buckeye butterfly at the side of the path, well disguised amongst the fallen leaves. It seems really late to see a butterfly - it’s several weeks since I saw one - and when I googled it when I got home, I found that they would normally leave during September or October. Now, admittedly September around here was unusually hot, but we have recently had a number of hard frosts, so you would have thought it would have got the message! There certainly didn’t seem much left at Rowe Woods to provide it with sustenance for its journey!