Iphiclides Podalirius

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A little over a week ago a Finnish client of ours rescued this beautiful butterfly from our swimming pool. It was absolutely stunning but shivering and struggling to move a bit. We had another couple visiting from Belgium at the time and by luck they were biologists! So they knew exactly what to do, what type of flower the butterfly could reach to eat from, to regain forces. In fact they were very patient finding a flower where they could leave it to nurse itself back to strength! They also searched the net to show me what type it was and so I found out its latin name. (In Finnish, it belongs to the sail-butterfly family). If you click to enlarge the picture with the flower, you can see how it was hanging on to the flower with its dear life, exhausted.

This was the first time I had seen one of these butterflies around here - and today I saw yet another, close to the pool in the plum tree - then flying towards the dog pen - exactly where we had finally left the rescued butterfly 10 days ago! So I like to think it was the same one, happily recuperated, having made its home here. Whether it was, I don't know, but it is a beautiful addition to our garden, that is for sure!

A note of thanks for Katarina who took these pictures and kindly shared them with us!

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