Every afternoon there is a fight in my garden in Portugal. It erupts without fail late afternoon in the shimmering heat. It does not stop until one butterfly concedes its territory.

Wait. Butterfly? Fight?

Butterflies fight. I’ve never been able to watch them in the same way since I knew what the amazing dance of butterflies meant, ever since I was a small child I have been absorbed by the mesmerising pirouettes of butterflies fighting for territory. It’s just that until I was in my twenties I literally thought they were dancing, spiraling each other for the fun of it spinning in the air with an incredible ballet performance just for me. Such is the innocence and ego of a child.

I still enjoy the dance. It simply now has meaning. It adds a layer to my observation that wasn’t there before. They have meaning and purpose, they are not simply flying flowers as I used to think of them. The fights have a rhythm, the loser flies away submissively, the victor holds on to the best territory, improves his technique with age, gets the girl..

It’s a gritty survivalist world away from the image of the butterfly that flutters aimlessly passed. And it is the slightly dreamy exercise of counting butterflies that makes the annual citizen science project ‘the Big Butterfly Count’ so appealing. Fifteen minutes in a sunny spot recording these colourful creatures is a popular way to get the British onboard with science and in the 2017 survey, 60,000 people took part. And with the survey having records now since it began in 2010 it’s a very useful record to have as butterflies react very quickly to changes in their environment, they are what’s known as an ‘indicator species’, as the survey explains ‘counting butterflies  can be described as taking the pulse of nature’.

I have missed the Great British butterfly count this year as I’m in Portugal, but here the swallowtails are gloriously dancing.

And life is well worth fighting for.