Small Skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris). 

Small Skippers are insects of high summer. Although they spend much of their time basking or resting among vegetation, they are marvelous flyers, manoeuvring expertly through tall grass stems. It is these darting flights, wings glinting golden-brown in the sunlight, that normally alert an observer to their presence. Closer examination will reveal many more individuals nectaring or basking with their wings held in the half-open posture distinctive of skipper butterflies. The butterfly is widespread in southern Britain and its range has expanded northwards in recent years.

The images were taken handheld with sunlight only, the hardest thing about this photograph was finding a good specimen to photograph. Because of their fast flying through long grass most of the insects on view looked as though they had 'had a hard paper round', as their wings were ragged and lacked colour.

The top image was taken with a very large aperture F4.0 to throw the background out of focus and concentrate on the butterfly. The bottom image was with a smaller aperture F8.0 which showed more of the background.

Top - Canon 30D Vivitar 100mm macro lens.