'A Dark Vanessa With Crimson Band'

The first stanza of C.H. Sisson’s “The Red Admiral” (Exactions, 1980): “The wings tremble, it is the red admiral Ecstatically against the garden wall; September is his enjoyment, but he does not know it, Name it, or refer to it at all.” When I was collecting butterflies as a boy, the Red Admiral was my favorite after the mourning cloak. The beauty of each is less gaudy, more complex than many other species. I always thought the orangish-red pattern on the wings resembled the outline of a gaping human mouth or a partially erased circle. The species was described by Linnaeus in 1758 and is known to lepidopterists as Vanessa atalanta. It is widely distributed among the world’s temperate zones. Sisson, no scientist, is right. Butterflies are often most active in late summer – a sort of lepidopteran last hurrah -- but I have seen no red admirals in our garden this year, only monarchs and various fritillaries and swallowtails. In his marvelous The Butterfly: Flights of Enchantment…