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Sat 04 Apr 2007The mixed fortunes of our winged wondersAnother Life: Wry as I feel about amateur naturalists "tracking the progress" of global warming (akin to encouraging Noah to keep tabs on how many elephants drowned today), I was able to love the first peacock butterfly as it darted abroad last month for its own voluptuous colour, its velvety splendour as it roamed the primroses and dandelions for nectar. Only then did I bother to log how early it was (March 25th - nothing special).Over in Dublin, a peacock had been spotted weeks earlier, on March 7th, on hebe flowers in Howth, and the first holly blue turned up in a Donnybrook garden on the 19th. There were peacocks in late March even on Rathlin Island, that chilly outpost of the north, and small tortoiseshells galore all over the country - including one, to my delight, here in Thallabawn in Co Mayo, where they have been rare for years. As for red admirals - once exclusively a summer migrant from Europe but now a random hibernator here - there was one even on January 5th on Dublin's Grafton Street.