Red Admiral in late October

A Red Admiral just zipped past, venturing out from a pocket of sheltered air, wavering up and down and side to side into the wind.  A crinkled orange brain fungus sprouts from the base of the gorse; the butterfly settles on the same bush.  Minuscule scales on its wing glint in the sun like panels of mica in granite.  The orange of its wing-bar matches the fallen beech leaves and the fungus.  There’s a silky, iridescent bronze quality to the superfine metallic hairs on its thorax and the inner section of its wing.  It tilts, head down, wings facing the sun, slightly tatty at the edges.  Its eyes glow tawny in the sunlight.  The insect’s antennae appear beaded, with tiny white spots at the tip of their clubs, as though they’re being charged by the sun.  The iridescence on the inner wing is mainly bronze, with touches of purple and green depending on the angle.  The tattered wing with its flecks of white resembles paint peeling off a wall.  Its hindwings are bunched up by the bark of the gorse and the clumps of greenish lichen.  As my shadow reaches the butterfly it closes its wings vertically, then flies away.