After careful consideration, I had to come up with my own classification for this particular Melitaea sp. & future observations of similar individuals. More in alt text but TL;DR this may be an unusual M. athalia but differenciation is based on male genitals alone, which sounds as horribly outdated as it may be.

(I also collected more scratches on my legs than individual species whilst crossing my local FFH territory.)

#Lepidoptera #Butterfly #Fritillary #HeathFritillary (?) #Insect #Nature