Clear the runway

Red admiral about to take off - clear the runway, tally ho old chaps :-) A work colleague has just spent a year on sabbatical monitoring native butterflies. As part of his project various of his friends and neighbours etc have been deliberately growing budliea and stinging nettles to encourage the butterflies. This little chap is one of over 200 or so red admirals to be released by just one of those volunteers.
We had had a long chat yesterday about his involvement in the project and about the vagaries of catching photos of butterflies. He then mentioned that there were a few set for release today and did I want him to being them down to my place so they could fly the coup/nest/box/netting. So anyway to cut a long story short(ish), he did. It's great because until fully warmed (revved) up they are a bit docile so could get lots of shots.... and yes this is actually only a very slight crop of background flax foliage. I got ..... this close :-)
I of course went bananas with the camera so others that didn't make it to blip are here