16/08/2022
We’ve been watching Scarce Swallowtail butterflies in our holiday garden here in Tuscany. Also called the Sail or Pear-Tree Swallowtail it is large, has distinctive tiger stripes and flies in a gliding majestic manner seemingly oblivious to onlookers with cameras.
It is not, as the name suggests, scarce around here but only to UK where it migrates only rarely.
It lives around woodland margins, scrub, orchards, grassy areas and rocky hillsides. We have pear trees and buddleja bushes in our woodland hillside garden so a perfect location. In caterpillar form it eats prunus and blackthorn leaves.
