Image © Norman Day. Please do not reproduce without permission.
(High quality original available - please enquire)


A unique, female, Green-Veined White (Pieris napi) butterfly with a miniature right forewing. This specimen was purchased from Mr Paul Dunn who provided the following interesting information about it:

"Caught 7th June 2000, Stourport, Wyre Forest District (UK). I had managed to get the afternoon to myself with the intention of seeing if there were any late flying Orange Tips along the banks of the River Severn at Stourport. After a couple of hours, and collecting several female Orange Tips, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a butterfly that didn't look quite right! I watched as it flew out towards the centre of the river and then again as it made its way back to some of the Hedge Garlic that adorned the bank. Once netted, I was amazed to find that the insect had only got what amounts to three-and-a-half wings!"

As you can see, Pbase's image compression software is poor, hence the artifacts above the leading edge of the forewings and around the antennae seen in the "large" image. These are not seen in the submitted "original" (also posted here), which is itself a half life-size jpeg reproduction (using paint.net) of an Olympus Studio raw-to-tiff image.

The lens used was the Sigma 150mm f2.8 macro ... mounted at the top of this copy stand:
http://www.pbase.com/plusiotis/image/95249188

............which had to be placed on the floor, so I (at 5' 11" tall) could look through the viewfinder!