Comma

The Latin name for this butterfly is Polygonia c-album - which translates as 'many angled white C'. How apt is that?

Tim the entomologist told me this.

I don't believe I had knowingly seen one before I took this photo. The Comma was less flighty than most others and easy to photograph - but I wanted to capture the glorious colour if its upper wings and it would not play ball, so I left it. Partly uncaptured...

there are, apparently, plenty of people who know a fair bit about mammals, birds, butterflies and dragonflies and rather fewer who know about worms or woodlice. The former group appeal to us. We study fungi now because, hey, we can't just eat it, but it may cure us or give us trips! Lichen or algae, less of a thrill.

More and more I have become aware of our human need not just to grasp, own, feel, witness but the inescapable fact that nothing at all is deemed of any value unless it is useful too or beautiful too or appreciated by us. It is as though for anything to matter, there has to be a reason we can understand, if not accept.

Why can't things matter without us?

I believe that a planet with no sentient life (as we understand it), just plants, say, or plant-like life, would still be full of value. Even if no human saw it or even knew about it. It just would.

What about a planet with only natural processes - like winds and water and volcanoes? Yes - yes - it would still matter, It is better not to blow up Uranus (or blow smoke up... sorry... I'll leave that there) than to blow it up.

But, do I feel it would it would be more of a tragedy if a meteor blew up a planet with sentient beings than one with just plants and one with just plants than one with just winds? I guess that intuitively I do... there remains this hierarchy... no, wait - I maybe feel as bad about the plants as the sentient beings. Yes... I think I do... or almost...

As for the Comma, warmer weather in Britain seems to have helped this butterfly halt and turnaround its severe decline. Rock on, global warming.