Your chance to become lord of the ringlets

An appeal has been launched to find new colonies of a rare mountain butterfly

- CHARLIE ELDER

VISITORS to the Lake District from the Westcountry and beyond are being asked to look out for England’s only mountain butterfly to help scientists protect the rare species.

The mountain ringlet, a small brown butterfly with orange wing spots, lives exclusively on mountains and is more commonly found in Scotland than in England, where conservationists say it is so hard to find that they have yet to discover whether numbers are going up or down.

Adult butterflies usually emerge in June and fly for up to three weeks, but the timing depends on the weather ~ with the last week of May the earliest it has been spotted in Cumbria while the latest is mid-July.