When I was seven or eight, I was given a copy of the “Ladybird Book of Butterflies & Moths”. The idea was to record seeing each one of the several dozen varieties of butterfly and moths illustrated in the book and when you had ticked off all the varieties in the book, you could send off for a badge or a certificate, or something like that.
The area where I lived was particularly blessed with species variety in the butterfly world as it encompassed chalk down land, salt marsh, ancient woodland on clay soil and a variety of other habitats. This meant that I had little difficulty finding most of the butterflies in the book, but one particular species evaded me: the European swallowtail, “Papilio machaon”. This was not surprising as it is found, to this day, in the UK only around the Norfolk Broads and even there it is rather rare.
I pestered my mother for months to take me to somewhere where we would see a swallow tail and no matter how often she explained that the only place we would be likely to see one was, back in those days, 3/4 of a day's journey on the train. I was distraught; inconsolable, even! I cried, I sobbed, I begged, but all to no avail; in the end, I just had to accept that my ladybird book of butterflies would never be complete!
I had almost completely forgotten about the ladybird book of butterflies until a few months back when a swallowedtail butterfly appeared in my garden. I have never seen one before, nor since. It took me right back to my childhood and the gamut of emotions that I endured due to that damned book of butterflies.
The only problem I have now is “what the hell did I do with that sodding book?”
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A yellow swallowtail butterfly feeding on the purple Buddleia blossom in my garden in Luxembourg. A rare species even over here!
@Paulos_the_fog There there's these swallowtails. You see one flapping about in the jungle and you don't immediately see it as a big deal ... until you realise how far away it is, and therefore how enormous it must be for you to see it at all (don't think I got any photos of my own). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papilio_homerus
Yes, there's quite a few swallowtail species in Thailand where I lived for a while; some are quite large. However the really impressive one over there is the Atlas moth some of which grow to a gigantic size; a 24cm wingspan being known!
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A picture of a gigantic Atlas moth dwarfing the human hand upon which it has settled. The top tip of each wing terminates in what looks like a snake's head, presumably to deter predators!
