I'm also going bright green at the sight of the Spanish Fritillary, but I might be less green if I'm lucky enough to see one on the French side next week.

A very enjoyable thread, so thanks David for posting.

I did wonder if your Tufted Marbled Skipper might have been Southern Marbled.

Roger

We seem to be running out of options - the description vaguely matches Scarlet Tiger, even if the size doesn't.
Roger

We are very saddened to hear this, Guy, and we send you our condolences.

It would have been of great comfort to your father to have you with him in his closing years, and I am sure he appreciated the sacrifice you made in leaving your life in Switzerland to be with him.

Roger and Ann

Not being in France in May afforded the opportunity to visit some of our old favourite spots around Ivinghoe Beacon, a very good area for Dukes generally.

This was a fresh male, upperside and underside.

Great trip and report, Pete. That should get you through the winter.

Amazing how Meadow Brown doesn't sound very exciting until you put Cyprus in front of it.

The months until April will be largely occupied by research and planning (what would we do without Google Earth)?

Roger

...Adjacent to our location, which is only a few km from the Med, is a small lake and what used to be a river, but is now just a sandy track. A few UKBers will know where I mean... Where exactly is the location? Is it somewhere I've been to when I visited you down there in spring 2015? Indeed it is...

We did manage to get back to Var at the beginning of September, mainly because we had not been able to get to our place there for two years, but Var in September is still interesting butterfly-wise. We had been assured that NHS Covid passes would function abroad as now, in France at least, it is nec...

Day 21 and over the notorious Col du Galibier. Notorious because it is 2640m at the peak, sheer drops if you are on the “drop” side, and many blind hairpin bends with traffic coming from the other direction flying round the bends and occupying 60% of the road width. Plus, the south side of Galibier ...

Viva Zapater, you might say... (maybe you have to be of a certain age) :D A club to which I undoubtedly belong... I'm sure that'll be lost on most on here. :) I'm sure you're right, David. For the benefit of those under a hundred years old, it was a 1952 film with Marlon Brando: https://en.wikipedi...

Thanks Jon for posting this. One of the many (to me, at least) puzzling aspects of butterfly behaviour is their ability to extract “salts” from seemingly dry stone. Not only does it seem impossible to extract anything from such dry surfaces, but then how does whatever has been extracted pass through...

Viva Zapater, you might say... (maybe you have to be of a certain age)

Roger

Out of interest, I presume you saw the upperside of that diamina for confirmation (and that it wasn't vernetensis, which had been giving you problems from the upperside). I'm interested because the underside looks so wrong, partly because of the orange/yellow spots but also because of the marginal ...

Day 14 we continued east into the Pyrenees-Orientales to a spot where Mountain Small White ( Pieris ergane ) flies, the number of sites for this species in France are diminishing rapidly toward zero. It is an incredibly rich site which featured something I’ve never seen before – all three Gatekeeper...

Hi Guy, Many thanks for your thoughts. I have found it difficult to find any definitive information on separating " athalia " from vernetensis . I'll have a detailed search in the Autumn. I also had some other " athalia " photos from the eastern Pyrenees and southern Alps which a...

Day 8 was a trip along the very rich Ossoue valley to about 1600m altitude. No particularly rare species among the 32 species flying here but a very pleasant day in an area where few people visit. Day 9 we tried the Col de Tentes (French side) on the border with Spain. I only went up the track to ab...

Blood on the track, Medard. Glad you told me that after my visit and not before! I can very easily see how an injury could happen as the rocks in the track had become very smooth. The local expert (JL) told me that there had been rockfalls over the winter and work was needed to clear the track. I su...

This is a trip report to southern France. Normally, we would be in Var, on the south coast of France at the end of June, but this year it had not been possible to get to Var, so we (my wife and I) started the four-week trip from Calais on 1 July. I will only briefly mention the Covid rules. Only bri...

The thread is July 2021, but it doesn't say where, so maybe I can sneak this one in. It's a Large Chequered Skipper ( Heteropterus morpheus ), that is, large in the sense that it is about 10% larger than a Chequered Skipper. NOT a UK species (which may not be much of a surprise), and quite localised...

Nice post, Roger, although part of me fears that if you are making special excursions in Britain to see particular butterflies then foreign travel is all but a pipe dream this year!! It may be a pipe-dream this year, but I haven’t quite given up yet. It’s just nice to see butterflies wherever and a...

Also on Marsh Fritillaries, a very enjoyable day in central Lincolnshire, with many thanks to Pete Smith for showing us the site. There were quite a few on display, mostly males, many showing a degree of wear but also quite a variation in the markings and colouring. Here is the best male and female ...