The margarine blue? Is that the same thing as the I can't believe it's not butterfly?
After a few days of rain the sun returned today. Minnie and I set off for the Jura Vaudois to see chestnut heaths. This butterfly is much scarcer in Switzerlad than the books suggest and doesn't seem to fly anywhere near me. I last saw it in 2013. At the same site in the Jura, but in an area closed off to the public, large heaths fly - or flew. It looked as if they were on the way to extinction and I don't know the present status. I kept my eyes open today in case any should wander off the edges of their private domain but saw none.
I did see a lot of chestnut heaths. This butterfly is the size of a large small heath. It is very variable in terms of the hindwing ocelli but the white splashes are distinctive and make it easy to identify. In flight some individuals really do look very chestnut.
The grass was long and the butterflies were mostly staying low so it was difficult to get shots without stems or their shadows obscuring part of the picture. Here are a few different individuals, showing the range of variation at just this one site:
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2016/glycerion16jul2016d.jpg)
(one of the really chestnut ones)
For comparison, here is a small heath at the same site today:
Another species we don't have in my part of Switzerland is small pearl-bordered fritillary. I always keep my eyes peeled for this when I go to the Jura and thought I was in luck today when a bright, smallish
Boloria flew past. But as soon as it landed I realised it was a cranberry fritillary:
That was the only one I saw. Their real home must be deeper in the inaccessible parts of the reserve. Moorland clouded yellows, which share the same foodplant as cranberry fritillary, were also to be seen within the reserve, very occasionally flying closer to the edges.
Remarkably little else was flying. The only Lycaenids I saw were two common blues, in widely separated locations. Lesser marbled and false heath fritillaries were locally common and there were a few heath fritillaries too. In the woods, as I walked to and from the site (it's about 6 km from the station to the marsh) I saw silver-washed fritillaries too, and a few whites, but really very little else. The commonest species by far was ringlet, which was flying in good numbers everywhere. There are four in this picture, with a chestnut heath thrown in too for good measure:
Guy