If you want to enjoy this extraordinary spring a great deal more, then you have turned to the right column. For as the Sun has shone, so the butterflies have emerged unconscionably early and the wild world is now full of fluttering dabs of colour. With my help you can turn them into friends for life and reach a new level of understanding of the beauty of the universe. How many other columnists can do that?

I have made rather a point, in my time, of being a bad birdwatcher: though on my good days, I can claim at least to be a good bad birdwatcher. However, I am an absolutely terrible butterfly-watcher: and I want to tell everybody about the profound pleasures of absolutely terrible butterfly-watching. Because I get more pleasure from butterflies with every passing year.

It all begins with the magic of a name. If you find yourself able to say “that is a Peacock” and “that is a Small White”, then you are able enjoy rather more than your own knowledge. This is because the acquisition of just a few names means that you cease to see butterflies as a single item: “What ho, a butterfly!” You begin to see them as individual species: and as result, you look more, you look closer, you get to know what you are looking at and as a result, you see more.

A small white butterfly flies past. And your eyes follow: because you want to see if it has orange tips to its wings. If it has, it is an Orange-tip, a male, and because you knew the name, you find that you have gained entry to a new world of beauty and delight.

Once you have learnt a few names, you will discover that your enjoyment of a walk or of a recumbent drink in your own garden, will increase immensely. You will find that your eyes have been opened, your mind has been engaged. This is not showing-off: it is a small but glorious advance in your understanding of the beauties of the world.

How do you start? The website UK Butterflies is a great help on identification. Any butterfly book will supply untold pleasure: the smaller in geographical ambition, the easier it is to use. FSC Publications offers Butterflies of Britain for £2.50. Get it, familiarise yourself with it, keep it, if you will pardon my coarseness, by the lav and acquire wisdom in small doses.

Or best, join Butterfly Conservation and you will not only get a free wallchart, you will also have the satisfying knowledge that you are doing your bit to keep a modicum of beauty fluttering about in this world. There are only 60-odd species of butterflies to see in this country, yet we have allowed five species to go extinct here in the past 150 years. What’s more, or rather less, the Chequered Skipper went extinct in England in 1976, though it hangs on in Scotland. Local extinctions, generally caused by casual habitat destruction, are a fact of modern life. Joining Butterfly Conservation is the best thing you can do if you want to stop that happening.

I’ve seen half-a-dozen butterfly species already this year, and one of the first, shockingly enough, was a Clouded Yellow. Even I knew that this is not supposed to happen: Clouded Yellows come fluttering in from the European mainland in the high summer. But here was a butterfly that had successfully hibernated in Britain, and this is the first year this has happened on a wide scale. The butterfly’s world is changing; so is everybody else’s.

Butterflies appear at this time of year by two methods: some emerge from hibernation, others hatch out of a chrysalis. You can even tell which does which: the hibernating butterflies have sculpted edges to their wings, so that when closed, they look convincingly leaf-like. The Peacock is a perfect example: all glamour with wings open, all modesty and drabness with wings closed. I have seen a lot of Peacocks as well as my lone Clouded Yellow, along with the dashing male Orange-tips, and the natty Small Tortoiseshells (the Large Tortoiseshell, alas, is one of those species that is extinct here).

It sometimes seems to me that butterflies have evolved specifically to add to the gaiety of life. There is almost a frivolity in the way they attack the problems of staying alive and becoming an ancestor. You can add to the gaiety of your own life by learning a few names. And as the climate changes, so butterflies find themselves creatures on the cutting edge. It was almost December when I saw my last Red Admiral last year: the first of the new year was seen in this country on January 1, just after 11am. Seldom has so dire a warning been announced in so delightful a way.

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