Butterfly in my garden

[Aafke]

Yesterday I could take a picture of this beautiful butterfly in my garden. In English it's called a  European Peacock or Peacock butterfly (Inachis io)
In Dutch we call it dagpauwoog, there is also the name peacock (pauw) in the name.
It's only living in Europe and Asia.
The base-colour of the wings is a rusty red, and at each wingtip it bears a distinctive, black, blue and yellow eye-spot.
The butterfly hibernates over winter before laying its eggs in early spring, in batches of up to 500 at a time. The caterpillars, which are shiny black with six rows of barbed spikes and a series of white dots on each segment, hatch after about a week and feed on nettles and hops.

The adult butterflies drink nectar from a wide variety of flowering plants, including buddleia, willows, dandelions, wild marjoram, danewort, hemp agrimony, and clover; they also utilize tree sap and rotten fruit.

It's nice for this butterfly that I have a lot of nettles in my garden.
This is the only one that I saw this year, I can remember that a few years ago I saw dozens of them on the buddleia.

greetings Aafke

[carla]

Beautiful Butterfly,

I cann't remember if I had one in my garden,I do have to watch better.

greetings Carla

[Kris G.]

What a beautiful Butterfly to have in your garden, Aafke!  Thanks for posting the picture!

[gayle]

What a spectacular butterfly, Aafke!  You have an amazing garden!  Thank you for the photograph and description.

Gayle

[Wing Goose]

What a beauty, Aafke.  Thank you for sharing something so beautiful !

     Lola
 

[Donna]

I have never ever seen one as pretty as that one Aafke. Your so lucky to have them, even rarely. Thank you for sharing that beauty with us.

[MAK]

  How fabulous to be visited by such a colorful creature! 

[Bird Crazy]

Wow what an amazing butterfly. Thanks for posting the picture. 

[valhalla]

The butterfly hibernates over winter before laying its eggs in early spring, in batches of up to 500 at a time. The caterpillars, which are shiny black with six rows of barbed spikes and a series of white dots on each segment, hatch after about a week and feed on nettles and hops.
greetings Aafke

A real beauty, Aafke - thanks for sharing

What I found interesting, is that your butterfly is much like our Monarch butterfly in terms of hibernation and sort of similiar caterpillars.  The Monarch (it is the 4th generation of the season)  makes a long flight from Canada to Mexico in the autumn to hibernate and it is this 4th generation that lays the eggs to begin the cycle again in the spring.