This page is a flowery meadow beside a hedge. Move your pointer and your bug will flutter, hover or hop after you. Choose a different bug at the bottom, and tap the notes to open them.
Macclesfield right now checking the sky…
When a bird comes close, it snaps its wings open. The sudden eyes can scare the bird off.
By rubbing its wings together it makes a hissing sound, which is enough to put off a mouse.
Adults sleep through winter in sheds, hollow trees and log piles, which is why you can see one on a mild day in February.
With its wings shut, the dark underside looks just like a dry leaf.
The caterpillars are black, spiny and speckled with white, and live together in a silk web on nettles.
A peacock that hatches in July may still be flying the following May.
Meet them all
Aglais io
A deep red butterfly with a large blue-and-yellow eye on each wing. The underside is almost black.
Vanessa atalanta
A black butterfly with a bright red band across each wing and white spots near the tips.
Gonepteryx rhamni
The male is butter yellow and the female very pale green. Both have pointed, leaf-shaped wings.
Anthocharis cardamines
A small white butterfly. Only the male has the bright orange wing tips. Both are mottled green underneath.
Maniola jurtina
A plain brown butterfly with one black eye-spot, ringed in orange, near the tip of each forewing.
Macroglossum stellatarum
A stout, grey-brown moth with orange hindwings that hovers in front of flowers by day, humming, with a long tongue.
Chorthippus brunneus
A brown, grey or mottled grasshopper with short antennae and long back legs. It is very hairy underneath.
Roeseliana roeselii
A chunky brown and green bush-cricket with very long, thin antennae and a cream crescent on the side of its body.
Through the year
The green months are when each one is on the wing, or hopping, in Britain. The bug following you is shown in red.
Lend a hand
Grass cut once in late summer, after the flowers have seeded, is worth far more to insects than a weekly trim.
Peacock and red admiral caterpillars eat nothing but nettles. A sunny clump in a corner is a nursery.
Ivy blooms in autumn, when little else does, and brimstones sleep among its leaves all winter.
Meadow browns and grasshoppers need native grasses, not flowers, for their young.
Each summer the Big Butterfly Count asks people to spend fifteen minutes counting. The results show how they are doing.
Many councils now leave road verges uncut until late summer. If yours does not, ask.
British bugs: 4 more places
Real photos of the bugs on this page. Tap one to see it bigger.
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons and are used under free licences. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews. Open a photo to see who took it.
Britain has lost nearly all of its old flower meadows in a hundred years. Every verge, field corner and unmown patch that is left to flower helps to put a little back.
Back to the topPond and stream bugs live on their own page: choosing one takes you there.
Bugs from other parts of the world live on their own pages: choose another.