A male orange-tip butterfly
Each week, Simon Barnes hears what the last seven-days has been like for a member of the animal kingdom
A week in the life? That’s a laugh. More like a life in the week. If I make it to four weeks I’ll be one of the luckiest orange-tip butterflies that ever took wing. Though I’m not inclined to measure success in number of days. Number of females more like. One would be good.
Monday
Today I completed my metamorphosis. I got through winter as pupa. I did the hatching and caterpillar thing last year. The caterpillar thing is eating, by the way: the seed pods of the garlic mustard plant, and very tasty too. Having eaten enough to last me for a lifetime, I found a nice discreet place and became a pupa. Now it’s spring and I woke from my long sleep as unlike a caterpillar as I’m unlike a human. I woke with wings.
Tuesday
Being a male butterfly is like being a sailor on shore leave: the only things that matter are drink and sex. The drink is nectar. It’s all I need and I’m not fussy about where it comes from: the ultimate energy drink. I did all the eating I needed last year.
Wednesday
Off again on another day of flying. Very fast, very direct. I reckon I could fly through a brick wall. Gardens, hedge-lines, forest edges: I’ve been belting along, topping up on nectar and having an occasional bask: the sun helps power my wings. I don’t worry much about getting caught and eaten: I taste foul, toxins from my caterpillar days. The white wings and orange-tipped wings are not only handsome: they’re also a warning. Eat me and you’ll regret it.
I realised the female had already been mated and was therefore hideous
Thursday
I’ll go for anything white. And there it was. Yes! A white butterfly! Oops, wrong species. Green-veined white, to be precise. Not one of us. So off again at high speed. Try again. This time it was the real thing: a female orange-tip, though she has no orange tips to her wings. Discreet but gorgeous. Or so I thought. A moment later, I realised she’d already been mated and was therefore hideous. A mated female puts out an anti-aphrodisiac. As I now realise.
Friday
Rotten day. Cold, rainy. No day to be a butterfly. Hunkered down low, wings folded, trusting in my mottled greed underwings for camouflage. Wait for the sun. Hope to survive. And that it’s sunny tomorrow. Time is ever so slightly crucial.
Saturday
Huzzah! There I was, barrelling along a hedge, and there she was, lurking low, and the deed was done. I might even fulfil my destiny and become an ancestor, but the next bit is up to her. Lay the eggs on the right food plant, garlic mustard for a choice though cuckoo flower will do. Hope that they don’t get accidentally eaten by muntjacs. And that the caterpillars survive. And that they get through the winter as pupae. And that they metamorphose in the bright days of early spring next year and fly. The males on orange-tipped wings.
Now there’s another week before us. I might even get lucky again.
*As told to Simon Barnes
Photograph by Alamy
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