http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7951720/National-Trust-recreates-Winston-Churchills-butterfly-house.html A recent survey among primary schoolchildren showed that a worryingly large percentage thought Churchill was a dog that sold car insurance. As a very young lad I visited L. (Leonard) H...

So it was your alceae that scotched the white spot theory, Guy! I would have expected the Andalucia alceae to be similar to the Var alceae , but populations do vary. Semi-rhetorical, but here is a photo of the boeticus from the PACA atlas published by OPIE, the French entomological society, a very l...

I am not 100% convinced that the Mallow Skipper ( Carcharodus alceae ) from 9 August is actually that. Those white discal marks on the hindwing look very pronounced (usually not present or very pale in alceae ) and I wonder if Southern Marbled Skipper ( Carcharodus boeticus ) is a possibility. There...

Just on the subject of euryale, here is a shot (21990) of a selection puddling in the Hautes Alpes this year. There were hundreds of them, and I think you can just about see from this photo the variation in the white unh markings, although most were virtually unmarked. So it’s not necessarily a geog...

The mystery Erebia – I offer these thoughts: there is a very faint white speckling that suggests euryale to me, rather than mnestra . Euryale is very common in the Valais and the male unh is almost completely unmarked, although this will be obvious to Guy. It looks too dark for mnestra , and the red...

Michael,

Your Hermit isn't a Hermit - I would go for Tree Grayling unless there is some form of Grayling endemic to the region that I am not familiar with.

Roger

There seem to be a lot of aberrations around this year. By coincidence, I saw 23425 at Pulpitt Hill, Bucks on 8 August, only a minor aberration though. If I had seen Walt's photo before I went, I would have looked at the numerous Common Blues more closely. I did, however, see Silver-spotted Skipper ...

Some interesting information here:

http://www.hertsmiddx-butterflies.org.u ... /index.php

The fact that in all the shots it is almost "glued" to Tufted Vetch (Vicia cracca) - the larval hostplant - or at least never far away, is a good indication. It does nectar on other plants, but any largish blue on Tufted Vetch is likely to be Amanda's.

I have seen suffused females like this on a few occasions. Here is an old photo of one I saw in Hampshire.

They certainly look rather like idas, but I would go for argyrognomon for two reasons: 1) the marginal orange band is contnuous and reaches the unf apex whereas it does not in idas, and 2) the external surfaces of the black edging to the lunules is relatively flat whereas I would expect it to be sig...

I did manage to get some photos of the Poplar Admiral (we saw three individuals) although photography was difficult because it is a very large and dark butterfly, extremely nervous, and I had other people with me and they would not have appreciated me scaring it off trying to get better photos. It w...

Here are a few of my favourites from this year: Safflower Skipper: beautiful curvature of the forewing, looks very aerodynamic Pyrgus carthami_20776.JPG Grison’s Fritillary: I like this small fritillary and saw it in France (in huge numbers) for the first time this year. Previously I had only seen i...

I always thought it was MoUrning Cloak, but when I checked in Tolman & Lewington it said Morning Cloak (at least I thought it did; I am in the UK and my T&L is still in France, so can’t check this at the moment). The pose in the photo would make the name MoUrning Cloak more appropriate (not ...

The Camberwell Beauties are still out in goodish numbers in this part of the world (Var), which seems exceptionally late (they are usually seen only in April) but the poor weather here has retarded the flight seasons of nearly all species. On 16 May I saw two hibernated (hence the battered state) CB...

Hi everyone, The weather in Var (south of France) has been unseasonably cold and wet and is forecast to continue like this for the next week or so. The butterfly season is about two weeks behind schedule and I wonder what happens to those butterflies that emerged in the warm week at the end of April...

It could be a female Common Blue ( Polyommatus icarus ) or perhaps a female Chapman’s Blue ( Polyommatus thersites ). The first brood females of these species are very similar. I would doubt that it could be anything else. The colouring is good for thersites first brood female and it is an early eme...

I have a copy of W S Coleman’s British Butterflies of 1893. It includes several species as having possibly once occurred in the UK. It doesn’t say they did exist, but simply recounts the historical evidence of who said they saw it and when, without endorsement. Coleman includes Black-veined White (n...

Guy, I suspect you may have seen Chestnut Heath and Large Heath at a location in the Doubs département, very likely the same one that I visited last year, similarly the wetland location for Scarce Heath where it was quite common. But then we probably have the same source of information. My comment o...

Whilst this area is not the richest in France, which has some 240 mainland species, according to Lafranchis there are quite a number of rare and interesting non-UK species listed as occurring in these départements such as False Ringlet, Hermit, Pearly Heath, Blues including Reverdin’s, Large, Alcon,...