Saw this beautiful butterfly in the meadows yesterday

On landing, it holds its wings firming shut and the undersides of its wings are this most wonderful iridescent green and blue. The topside of its wings as it flutters away are brown.

This is the Green Hairstreak butterfly. There are five different Hairstreak butterflies in this country and this Green one and the Purple Hairstreak are doing alright. The other three, the Brown, Black and White Letter Hairstreaks are not. They all have white lines on the underside of their wings (…the hairstreak) but on the butterfly in my photo, this white line has broken into a series of white dots.

What a beauty. Its the 14th butterfly species for the meadows.