Fritillary relative sizes?

eccles · Post by **eccles** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 3:24 pm

I visited Hazelbury Common today looking for chalk hill blues. There was a guy there logging species who said there were a couple of dark green fritillaries near the bottom of the common. I eventually spotted one but couldn't pin it down for a photo, then I saw another fritillary-like butterfly that was substantially smaller, about meadow brown in size, and nope, no photo here either as I lost sight of it when it flew over a hedge into a cow pasture. Any suggestions as to what it might be? There seemed to be a row of whitish spots at the bottom of each rear wing. The rest was a frit-like brown and black mottling.
Other sightings posted in the requisite forum.

eccles · Post by **eccles** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 6:07 pm

Having now been to the Velvet Bottom reserve as recommended by Markatbath and seen lots of dark green fritillaries I now realise that they aren't as big as I initially thought they were. So my mysterious sighting at Hazelbury was a dark green frit.

Wayne · Post by **Wayne** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 8:26 pm

Could it not have been a comma? The form that emerge earlier have more rounded wings.

eccles · Post by **eccles** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:42 am

Thanks for the comment Wayne but it wasn't a comma. I have loads of commas at my local patch. The following day I got a picture of the underside and there's no way of confusing the two there.