Red Admiral

I captured several images of this butterfly on the buddleia (btw I'm going to get another variety of buddleia as the colour of this one does not photograph well - much too strident). I was amazed to see just how battered the Admiral's wings were when fully open so I decided to post this image of the underside instead. I was wondering just how a butterflies wings could become so damaged, the Red Admiral is such a common garden butterfly, I thought I knew all about them. Decided to look on UK Butterflies how wrong I was. It seems that the majority of Red Admirals in the garden are migrants arriving in May and June that originate in central Europe. No wonder it's wings were battered!