Year's first butterfly

Ok, technically this isn't the first butterfly I've seen this year. I've seen several small tortoiseshell butterflies (nässelfjärilar) these last seven or ten days and also one radiant common brimstone butterfly (citronfjäril) yesterday. But it is the first butterfly that I've been able to capture on camera this year.

Do wish I had my camera when we saw the brimstone. They're not that rare, but the tortoiseshell butterflies are much more common so while I have several photos of them (also some of large white [kålfjäril] and inachis io [påfågelöga]) I've got almost zero of brimstone butterflies. Well, I'm bound to get more chances to take pics of it later: towards summer we often have lots of butterflies that fiest on our thistles.

My sis, who loves the colour blue, is always on the lookout for polyommatini (blåvingar), but we don't seem to have many blue butterflies around here. On a really warm and sunny day -- one of those days when you can feel the thunder in the humid air -- years ago we visited Ales stenar and climbing up the hills towards the ancient monument we were surrounded by polyommatini butterflies. My sis was cranky from the heat and effort of walking and climbing up the steep paths, but seeing those little blue butterflies made her feel a lot better. You have to bear in mind, we had barely seen blue butterflies in real life before and here they were everywere, tumbling around our feet.

I remember those butterflies just as well as I remember the view from the site. The monument is placed by the cliffs that line the southern coast of Skåne in the area. Up there you have a fabulous view of the waters separating Sweden and Skåne from Germany (and Poland). The day we went up there, the sun made the Baltic Sea glitter like tinsel. Blue and pale gold tinsel stretching as far as I could see to the south, east and west. It was a beautiful sight and it made me think "no wonder they choose to make a monument here, if it really is a king buried there I understand why he chose this place to rest".