# Grayling

*Hipparchia semele*

When it lands, it immediately closes its wings and tilts its body to minimize its shadow, becoming a ghost among the stones.

- **Taxonomy:** Animalia › Arthropoda › Insecta › Lepidoptera › Nymphalidae › Hipparchia
- **IUCN Red List status:** Least Concern
- **Population trend:** decreasing
- **Biome:** grassland
- **Habitat:** Dry, open areas including heathlands, coastal dunes, and chalk grasslands with sparse vegetation.
- **Diet:** Adults feed on nectar from wild privet, bramble, and thistles; larvae feed on various fine-leaved grasses like sheep's fescue.
- **Range:** United Kingdom, Europe, North Africa, Western Asia
- **Size:** 45-62 mm wingspan.
- **Lifespan:** 2 to 4 weeks as an adult butterfly.
- **Active:** diurnal
- **Threats:** Habitat fragmentation, loss of heathland to development, and lack of traditional grazing leading to scrub overgrowth.
- **Safe to approach?:** Harmless. To observe, approach slowly as they are easily spooked. Do not handle, as their wing scales are easily damaged. If found indoors, gently relocate outside.

## About

The grayling or rock grayling ( Hipparchia semele ) is a species in the brush-footed butterfly family Nymphalidae.

## Sources

- Plate: https://gaia-dex.com/species/aff973b4-6a9f-4c74-a613-9b6c7fa747cb
- iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/102800
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchia semele
- Conservation status: IUCN Red List category, as recorded by Gaia-Dex
- Photo: https://inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/221541130/medium.jpg (Jamie O'Neill, CC-BY, via iNaturalist)

Habitat, diet, size and similar notes are AI-written summaries; check them against the linked sources before relying on them.