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This summer's first imagos were hatched in July. How so, when peacock butterflies were in flight from April to June? The answer is simple, they wintered as imagos, emerging from their wintering places with the first warm weather. Now we have to do with the first hatched generation.

 

It is a quite common but beautiful, and from some aspects surprising-looking, Nymphalidae butterfly. In the rest position the wings of a peacock are closed:  the underside of the wings has a dark brown base colour, and so they are really difficult to discover, resembling rather a dried leaf.

 

Peacocks are easy to recognise unambiguously with their bright colours and the large eye spots. The base colour of the wings is brick red, the eyespots on the forewings are multicoloured, on the rear wings less colourful, blue-and-black. Peacocks still fly – depending on the weather – even at the end of September. At the moment they feed on flower nectar and the juices from ripening fruits on trees and fruits fermenting on the ground.