Working from home has its advantages, especially when you face your garden while typing away on your laptop. I got distracted when I noticed a very red butterfly flapping away. I didn’t remember ever having seen a red butterfly. I got up, grabbed my camera and hoped that it would stay still somewhere. It did! It was a cinnabar moth, or in Dutch: de Sint-Jacobsvlinder.
Despite being a moth, these butterflies fly during daytime. They’re about 20mm tall and and have a wingspan of 32–42 mm.
As caterpillars they feed on the ragwort plant (Sint-Jacobskruid), which I have already covered here in Dutch. Because of this they eat poisonous substances of which they can’t get rid of and therefore become poisonous themselves.
You can see this butterfly from April till the beginning of August.
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