Hi Buzzard. You don't work for the Armenian Tourist Office do you? I suspect they're going to get a lot of visitors next year, after people have read these amazing posts!
If you've seen Gavarnie blue in France, then I'm happy to give you an armchair tick, as the population in Armenia is
A. dardanus, not
pyrenaica. I think this is accepted now as a distinct species - and if I understand Kudrna right (reading between the lines a bit)
pyrenaica and
glandon are more closely related to each other than to
dardanus (he says
pyrenaicus is a member of the
glandon group but that
dardanus is only possibly a member of this group).
Re the green hairstreaks, I think Sovinsky's green hairstreak is
Callophrys chalybeitincta. Now it's almost impossible to identify
Callophrys from the underside alone - the colour of the upperside and the shape and size of the sex brand are important. But one thing you can see from the underside is the anal lobe on the hindwing. In
chalybeitincta this is quite well developed. In the other two Armenian species (
danchenkoi and
armeniaca) it is much less so. Yours seem to have very little in the way of anal lobe, visible in these pictures, at least. My source is Tuzov -
Butterflies of Russia and Adjacent Territories. I'd be interested to know how the diagnosis of
chalybeitincta was reached - perhaps by ecological or distributional clues.
Love it!
Guy