Melitaea athalia
This is a very attractive small butterfly which seems black in the middle and orange on the outside. It was known as "the woodman's friend" because as new coppices were cut inside woods (to provide a supply of long thin branches for poles and fencing) it would follow with its breeding from one coppice to another.
Larval food plant: common cow-wheat, a plant of coppices and clearings inside woodlands.
Where seen: At just a few sites, in sheltered heathland valleys on Exmoor and on grassland in Devon and Cornwall, and in Kent, where the butterfly is found in woodland clearings.
Current conservation status: A terrible long-term decline – 68 per cent since 1984 – but things have picked up in the past five years owing to strenuous conservation measures.
