I had great difficulty deciding where to go this morning but in the end settled on the Rhône Valley. It's a late year so I will put off visits to Geneva and the Jura for a week.
Despite generally low numbers of most species it was an excellent day, with the tally passing 40 species (41, to be precise) for the first time this year. Many species were represented by single individuals and some were notably absent - marbled skipper and Provençal fritillary, for example. I've seen this latter species as early as April in some years. The full list was:
Swallowtail, scarce swallowtail, Apollo, small white, green-veined white, wood white, orange tip, black-veined white, clouded yellow, Berger's clouded yellow, brimstone, small copper, green hairstreak, common blue, Chapman's blue, Adonis blue, holly blue, green-underside blue, baton blue, little blue, Provençal short-tailed blue, Osiris blue, Swiss Zephyr blue, northern brown argus, Queen of Spain, pearl-bordered fritillary, Glanville fritillary, spotted fritillary, comma, red admiral, small tortoiseshell, Camberwell beauty, small heath, wall, large wall, speckled wood, de Prunner's ringlet, southern grizzled skipper, safflower skipper, olive skipper, dingy skipper.
Here are some piccies of some of them, beginning with a fresh, male large wall:
This was my first black-veined white of the year:
A few green hairstreaks are still about. At altitude they will fly well into July but in the valley they will be over much earlier:
Wood white with a small white:
A different wood white dancing with a green-veined white:
This female Camberwell beauty is laden with eggs:
I haven't posted a Queen of Spain for a while (a week or two, anyway):
This next is a very curious skipper. It was about the size of
armoricanus - certainly nowhere near as big as
carthami - and very well marked on the upperside:
Several features on the upperside resemble
carthami. But the underside, when I was finally able to get a glimpse of it, was pure
serratulae:
At the time, I thought it must be an extraordinarily strongly marked
serratulae. Then doubts crept in and I wondered if it was a small
carthami with an anomalous underside. I saw a more typical
serratulae later on the same walk.
Here is a genuine carthami from today:
Here is a little blue:
And here its bigger, bluer cousin, the Osiris blue:
There were quite a lot of these creeping around on a muddy patch of grass ...
... in the company of many other blues, including Adonis:
This is a pair of Provençal short-tailed blues:
My first northern brown arguses for the year were flying - and not looking that fresh really:
Some scenery:
The same scenery with dog:
I got home quite late but immediately set out again to the woods to see if Kisāgotamī or Gautama had graduated into 5th instar yet. Both have been laid up for the last few days. Excitingly, Gautama has indeed made the grade:
That picture was taken with flash, as it was getting dark.
Kisāgotamī is still laid up. She will probably ecdyse tomorrow:
Yesterday I could find only five of my six purple emperor caterpillars. Rāhula had disappeared from the leaf cluster he has been feeding in for the last week or so. Tonight, by pure luck, I found him again, a few leaf clusters away. He is high in the tree so flash is of little benefit:
So, all six of the 2016 cohort are still alive ...
Guy
)
We have a rather bedraggled family of newly-emerged Great Tits in the garden, looking none too impressed by their introduction to the world!
