Last year the empress landed on my foot

She is of course not the same purple emperor (empress) as last year, or the year before, or in any of the other 40 years we have lived in this house in the middle of the Sussex woods.

She is the great grand daughter x 40. But she did do the same as her predecessors this year, and came into the garden to see us.

She was obviously newly emerged and drinking in her new world.

She like all the other empresses was perhaps a little bemused and entranced by what she had come into after spending a year inside an eggshell, a cocoon, and as a caterpillar munching the leaves of the willow tree in the woods.

Last year the empress of the year landed on my foot and there spent a happy half hour tasting my skin and the leather of my sandals.

I showed the photograph of that meeting on this page and possibly you could remember that. On that occasion this magnificent great butterfly stayed in the garden by the back door for half the day, then, like all the others before and since, flew high up into the oak crown canopy and lived her short fortnight of adult life amongst the treetops.

There last year she mated and her child came into the garden to sit on my wife's hand for half an hour.

Lest you should think I placed a dead empress there for a clever photo shoot I was able to summon six good Sussex men and women true to witness this strange behaviour.

These together with Mark Monk-Terry, field officer for the Sussex Wildlife Trust, were on their way to lunch having been pulling bracken in the nature reserve around my home.

They are Mark's "Hit Squad" who voluntarily carry out nasty jobs few others will touch. None of these except Mark had ever been so close to one of Britain's rarest and most famous butterflies.

They were as delighted as we were. After a while our empress took to the trees, and never came down to our level again. Just as we expected.

These insects obviously have a need for salts and chemicals to get them going when they hatch. In this case they were tasting best Waitrose soap.

Last year, I dread to think what was on my sandalled feet. The year before, it was squashed flies on the front of my car radiator.

One year it was birthday cake. Another a cup of tea. Once it was creosote, while they have been known to dab into a drain can of sump oil.

Perhaps today's youngsters are becoming more choosy and refined.