Paul writes: This is a butterfly I wouldn’t mind seeing in the UK, it just scrapes onto the British list as a very rare vagrant. It’s a mountain species that occurs in most of the larger mountain regions in Europe. Isolated populations in several of these areas have led to a lot of different races and variations so sometimes the red marking can be orange. I saw this one near the village of Gimmelwald in the Swiss Alps at an altitude of around 1300m in July last year. Conditions must have been perfect as I had a lot of sightings throughout the day. They are strong fliers but also land regularly on flowers, for a feed of nectar.
British records go back to 1803 when one was reported from Scotland. Records continued throughout the years but most were discounted as being specimens from introduced populations or just hearsay. The most convincing records all occur in years of large scale immigration of other butterfly species, on strong easterly winds. The last record occurred in 1986 at Loose in Kent.
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