Pierids
A healthy array of this family were seen during the trip.
Large, Small and Green Veined White could usually be seen in lowish numbers, whilst
Black Veined Whites seemed to crop up in ones and twos practically everywhere.
To the amusement of the group,
Orange Tips were still going strong at altitude, and towards the end of my stay there was a significant emergence of
Cleopatras which suddenly seemed to be all over the place (they had been relatively scarce earlier in the trip).
A 'lifer' for me was to finally see
Peak White. This was probably the most excited Roger got on the whole trip. He suddenly spotted one which came to rest for about 3 seconds. I got a decent look at it but no photo, sadly.
Mountain Dappled White also fell into this 'should have seen the one that got away' category. This species isn't noted for its propensity to hang around - I saw three in total, and all of them were in a hurry!! Sometimes sunny and warm conditions can work against you.
One high altitude Pierid that DID settle was
Mountain Green Veined White:
At lower levels, I was paying scant attention to this group - we saw 100+
Wood Whites but I never took a single photo! However, when a female
Bath White appeared, I had my camera out before I could even see where she'd settled. I've seen flighty males before, but this was my first experience with the fairer sex of this species, and what a beauty she was: more heavily marked than the males and, thankfully, far more prone to have her image taken:
Berger's Clouded Yellows would pop up regularly.This individual, rather unusually, came to rest with wings partly open:
Amongst the yellow
Brimstones were even darker
Clouded Yellows:
There were other members of the
colias genus -
Mountain Clouded Yellow was very common at altitude, so much so that mating pairs were seen:
I'd never realised that they have such vivid green eyes!
Of course, they never rest wings open, but in this part of Europe, butterfly casualties are littered all over the roads. We found this unfortunate vehicle victim whose postscript is to provide a view of the rarely seen upperwings:
Moorland Clouded Yellows were also about, albeit in much smaller numbers: