Butterfly Identification
Small Tortoiseshell

I've seen more butterflies in one day today than ever before in my lifetime - for the first time ever a chocolate box scene of fluttering butterflies around the flowers at nursery; I counted at least 8 little brown ones.

On the allotment, a few white ones have been flying around (maybe 'Cabbage whites' considering the amount of brassicas on the site!)

Then, I spotted the butterfly in the picture which from the butterfly identification chart I used, seems to be a male 'Small Tortoiseshell', although I wouldn't have said it was particularly small!

To my amazement I also saw a beautiful pinky coloured butterfly crawl out from some weeds I'd chucked in for the chickens...sadly they got to it before I did :-( I've never seen such colours and would love to know what it might have been, and whether it might have been a day-flying moth.

What's the difference between moths and butterflies?

Apparently the easiest way to tell is their 'feelers' - butterflies have long, thin feelers with little balls on the end, whereas moths don't have these little balls and their feelers might be more unusual/feathery.

Butterflies are so fragile, colourful and beautiful, I think we'll be taking more interest in them in future!

For now, there's some butterfly colouring pages and papers over on my other site, Card Making World.

We also have some gorgeous butterfly printables and a digital stamp in The Printable Craft Shop.

Have you got any butterfly pictures? Send them to us, tell us a bit about where you saw it and we'll put it on the site!

Kids Homepage