Speckled Wood

Pararge aegeria

Description:

The Speckled Wood is dark brown with creamy white patches on wings. Males have either 3 or 4 upper hindwing eyespots. The fourth spot shows only in flight. Females have brighter and more distinct markings than males.

Habitat:

The Speckled Wood breeds in woodland habitats, lanes and tracks between tall hedgerows parks, gardens, and scrub. It seems to prefer slightly damp areas where there is tall grass and some dappled shade. I saw this one in the woods near Drumnadrochit.

Species ID Suggestions

5 Comments

The MnMs 10 years ago

Thanks Debbie, for the info, is very interesting!
Thanks, Harum :-)

HarumKoh 10 years ago

nice butterfly!

Debbie Stewart 10 years ago

Hi Marta, I wasn't suggesting you needed to find the sub species but thought I'd pass the info on as I found it fascinating there could be that many in such a small place :-)

The MnMs 10 years ago

Hi Debbie! Thanks for the post. I was just about to go to sleep but I quickly saw your message. I did not know. Nice! Thanks for telling me. I will take a look to the page tomorrow to see if I can figure out which subespecies did I find :-)

Debbie Stewart 10 years ago

Lovely find Marta, did you know there were four different sub species in Britain depending on where you found them? I didn't until I read this:
http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species.p...