When imagination takes flight

Pushing the boundaries of technology, and his own capabilities, has led Andrew Fusek Peters to create a butterfly book like no other. Here he talks to Tracy Calder about fragility, flight and the importance of hairy eyes

- Tracy Calder

As I sit down to chat with Andrew Fusek Peters about his new book, Butterfly Safari, there are many questions I want to ask him, but one in particular has been bugging me since I saw one of his extreme close-ups of a Speckled Wood. ‘Why do some species of butterfly have hairy eyes?’ I blurt out. ‘There’s a theory that because they like faeces they don’t want to be dunking their eyes in it, so the hairs prevent them from getting too close,’ he laughs. ‘They’re so weird.’ There’s so much we still don’t know about butterfly behaviour, but books like Andrew’s are perfect for sparking curiosity and, ultimately, aiding conservation efforts. Having spent the best part of five years travelling around the UK observing and photographing these slim-bodied insects, Andrew is clearly bewitched. ‘I know butterflies are called lepidoptera, which means scaly wing, but when you look closely at the antennae of a Small Tortoiseshell even that is covered in thousands of scales,’ he explains. ‘It’s insane!’

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