“Look daddy, a butterfly” was all I overheard as a little girl and her father cycled by. She had, indeed, seen a butterfly—a mourning cloak.
There are quite a few mourning cloaks around now that August is over. These beautiful butterflies prefer somewhat cooler conditions and so they aestivate when the weather is hot and dry. Aestivation (from the Latin word for summer, aestas) is a hibernation-like period of dormancy in response to high temperatures and low humidity. Mourning cloaks aestivate, but they are now back in goodly numbers.
Incidentally, mourning cloaks not only aestivate in the summer, they also hibernate in the winter. If the weather is not just as they like it, they close down.
This is the mourning cloak spotted by a little girl on a bicycle.
