Since then, I've started noticing orange-tips all over the place. They seem to appear wherever spring meadows are bursting into life, dancing lightly across the grass before rarely settling for more than a few seconds.

The males are easy to recognise thanks to the brilliant orange tips on their wings. Females, however, don't have the orange patches at all. Instead, they're white with black tips, so they're often mistaken for small white butterflies. Turn either butterfly over though, and you'll find one of my favourite features—a beautiful marbled pattern of green and white underneath the wings that provides perfect camouflage amongst flowers and grasses.

Orange-tip butterflies have a wonderfully close relationship with plants in the cabbage family, especially cuckoo flower and garlic mustard. Females carefully lay just one egg on each flower stem. This might seem rather mean, but there's a good reason for it. When the caterpillars hatch, they'll happily eat other orange-tip caterpillars if they meet, so spreading the eggs out gives each youngster the best chance of survival.