Speckled wood
The speckled wood is a brown butterfly covered in pale yellow or cream spots, like sunlight dotted on a forest floor. It has little eyespots on its wings. It loves shady woods, hedges and leafy parks.
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Fun facts
Some boys guard a sunny spot in the wood and chase away other males. Other boys fly around searching for girls.
The caterpillar is green with a short forked tail.
It can spend the winter either as a pupa or as a half-grown caterpillar, so it flies several times a year.
Speckled woods in the north are bigger and darker than those in the south.
In Scotland and on the Isles of Scilly there are special kinds with darker wings or orange spots.
Most asked questions about Speckled wood
?Where does the speckled wood live?
In woods, glades, hedges and leafy parks across Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia.
?What does the speckled wood caterpillar eat?
Different kinds of grass.
?How big is the speckled wood butterfly?
Its wings are about 5 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pararge aegeria
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Nymphalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Nymphalidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Speckled wood (butterfly) (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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