Meadow Brown with more spots than it needs

Looking out of the bedroom window before 9am today a brimstone butterfly could be seen flying around the garden. I headed out to see if I could photograph this probable second brood individual. Of course by the time I got out there it had long gone and in its place a couple of holly blue butterflies were wafting about. We've had these in the garden for around ten years now and it amazes me as the only holly we have are two clipped pom-poms in one border. In the past I've watched them laying eggs on the holly leaves, size of holly tree doesn't matter then.

While I was out here then I had a wander around and saw a meadow brown feeding on one of the Helenium. Nice, we don't get that many in the garden though they are increasingly being seen.  Then I looked again. The black eye-spot on the wing contained two white spots. I did a double take, this was definitely not a gatekeeper, a similar looking species which does have two white spots on its black eye-spot. No this is definitely a meadow brown which should only have one white spot within the black eye-spot. This quite well worn individual was to be honest a little larger than normal. Was that significant? Are meadow browns with two white spots genetically a little larger than their species? Questions. 

At some angles the twin white spot were not visible, though this was simply the wing covering the second spot. I took a few more images then after reading up on the variability of meadow brown spots I confirmed in my mind it was this species but to be sure I got in touch with a friend by email attaching these images. He confirmed this was indeed a meadow brown quoting from the book The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland by Thomas and Lewington;

"in both sexes there is much variation in eye-spot and other markings"

He even sent me a photograph he'd taken a few years back of what is called a 'blind' ringlet - with uniformly brown wings showing no visible spots at all, a rare aberration on this usually spotty butterfly. A fine example of how variable some individuals can be in all species. I thanked him and left him to head off for the day to hopefully watch many purple emperor butterflies at Grafton Wood in South Worcestershire.

After yet more reading around I discovered that the prevalence of twin white spots on the meadow brown generally increases north of the Midlands. Though that's too simplistic. Of the four recognised sub-species they are localised ranging from the Scilly Isles and Cornwall to Ireland to Scotland and northern England with smaller localised variations elsewhere. Twin white spot meadow browns do occur further south, for example in Dorset these variations are rare but recognised. But this all tends to be localised presumably genetic populations and the spots may be of variable intensity or even missing.  What this individual was doing in a Somerset garden I'm not sure. Thinking about this however, we've had strong north west winds for days. Was this individual picked up elsewhere, caught in the slipstream and dropped into the garden? I'm not sure but it is one theory.

I'd not seen a two white spot meadow brown before and learning something new each day about butterflies is proving very energising and it is keeping me very much on my toes while providing a new impetus to my wildlife observations.