An early start for the butterfly year

I just sent my record of the first butterfly of the year to the fantastic Woodland Trust site nature's calendar, a citizen science website which allow enthusiast naturalists to add their phenological data. It has fantastic live interactive maps and data is also used for scientific projects. Only once before I had my first butterfly of the year in January, but Sunday's (8th) was the earliest. A Peacock, flying strong, but coming close enough to us for ID (the photo above is from a few years back). We have had very mild weather since before Christmas, and this is stirring up overwintering bugs and bringing them out. All five butterflies, which spend the winter as adults (Brimstone, Small Tortoiseshell, Commas, Peacocks, and Red Admiral) had been reported in the Butterfly Conservation website by the 8th of January.