European Butterflies "Top ten of 2019" amid Coronavirus

[David M]

Very nice, Jason.

My own #2, 3 & 4 are all from Spain last summer.

Yes, #2 is Zapater's Ringlet. We saw a handful in 2018 but I finally found a spot where they were plentiful and having up to half a dozen flying around me and occasionally settling on me was a highlight of a lifetime, not just of 2019:

#3 is the bleusi form of Sooty Copper. It was the only speciality of the region we failed to see in 2018, but thankfully there were around a dozen spotted on last year's visit. They are absolutely divine and radiate iridescent colours as they move around on their perches:

#4 is one I hadn't expected to see. We had no knowledge of a Spanish Argus colony in the region until one of our fellow travellers said he had been given one by Iberia's equivalent of Dr Jeremy Thomas, Miguel Munguira. We drove 1,800m up a mountain and there they were - a healthy colony in the lee of a steep escarpment:

[petesmith]

Jason, I really like your brace of Asian Fritillaries, and am very envious of your Thor's Fritillary - a species I have yet to see.

David, great stuff from the Montes Universales. zapateri - well it had to be on the list! I confess I also very nearly put morronensis into my selection as well. It was certainly one of the big hitters from the MU, along with bleusei.

I look forward to the rest...

[David M]

Jeez, I'm finding it tough to narrow things down. Here goes with the next 3 (I will then have 8 to whittle down to the final 3)!

#5 Another mating pair, and not much of an image, but in two weeks in the French Alps last summer I saw just THREE Cynthia's Fritillaries. Amazingly, two of them were this mating pair, which was incredible luck under the circumstances:

#6 When we were preparing a trip to Italy in 2018, I had no idea there were colonies of Scarce Fritillaries in the Piedmont region. We found plenty of them - a beautiful butterfly and very easy to approach and observe too:

#7 In all my years up in the mountains of France, I've seen plenty of Peak Whites, but never had I seen one settled for more than a microsecond until last year, when for some inexplicable reason plenty of them seemed content to do so:

[petesmith]

Great choices there David - cynthia and maturna are my two favourite European Fritillaries.

And well done on getting the Peak White at rest - they are absolute b*gg*rs to get close to!

[David M]

Thanks, Pete. It's taken some while to narrow the remaining 8 down to 3 and I hope you will understand that I reserve the right to post the 'also rans' separately later?

#8 - Alpine Grizzled Skipper. This is a tricky species to find, so when I saw a pyrgus bigger than malvoides at 2,000m on col d'Izouard, but smaller than the larger pyrgus I pursued it with zeal. It proved a wise move, as we had before us a classic andromedae in good condition:

[David M]

#9 - Northern Wall Brown. Nothing to get particularly excited about normally, but this species has frustrated me for years. I have seen the odd tatty one in the French Alps in late June/early July and am constantly on the alert for them which wastes time when there are so many similar-looking maera on the wing.

Travelling to Italy in mid-June scratched the itch though. This is prime flight season and the butterfly was fresh....and very obviously different to it's close relative, Large Wall Brown:

[David M]

#10 Balkan Fritillary. The venerable Roger G (and others) had tipped me off about a site in SE France for this species, but the location is a b*gger to get to, so I'd traditionally not taken fellow butterflyers there, even though I'd been independently a couple of times myself.

In 2019, we had a cloudy morning with a sunny afternoon forecast, so I threw caution to the wind and drove around the 1,000+ potholes on the road in and was rewarded with several individuals of this rare French butterfly:

[petesmith]

A lovely finale there David! Great shots of petropolitana and andromedae!

Balkan Frit is indeed a tricky one to find in France - I have only seen it on three occasions, at two different sites. My favourite photo of graeca is below, this one photographed on the French/Italian border:

I look forward to seeing your "also rans"!

[Roger Gibbons]

I can echo Pete's sentiment about graeca. I find it highly elusive, mainly I think because it does not seem to emerge before mid-July and I am generally in the Mercantour too early.

The last decent photographic opportunity I had was in 2006 and that was in very windy conditions.

I get to see it most years when I am there at about the right time, but it always seems to skittish and I can never get near enough for a decent photo.

Even this year I watched a couple at what I suspect was David's location flying non-stop but when the sky clouded over, could I see where they landed? I scanned with my Papilio binoculars but never had any joy.

This is the best I managed since 2006, in July 2017.

[Padfield]

Indeed, I should be in Spain right now, and it is not clear when I will be able to get back home to Switzerland this year. Like everyone, I look forward to making amazing discoveries in my own garden in 2020, but here's to 2019 anyway ...

No.1 risks boring the pants off anyone who knows me, but I have no choice. I had to be in Switzerland at the tail-end of June for school graduation and could only stay a week, so my chances of finding Erebia christi (Rätzer's ringlet) were low. I paid one visit, on 6th July, to the most accessible site I know for public transport and bike, and by a wonderful stroke of chance found a single, fresh male. My photos of him are rubbish but he marks the highlight of the year (as christi always does).


(Erebia christi)


(Erebia christi)

Nos. 2 and 3 are my two lifers of 2019: Scolitantides abencerragus (false baton blue) and Carcharodus tripolinus (southern mallow skipper), both from my spring trip to Málaga. I might have seen the latter before but I think this is the first one in a region where it could only be this, because alceae doesn't fly there. It is certainly the only photographed individual I have from such a region.


(Scolitantides abencerragus)


(Carcharodus tripolinus)

From the same trip, Danaus plexippus (monarch) was a great pleasure. I'm used to seeing this in Spain now but it is a wonderful butterfly to watch so comes in at no. 4:



I'm not sure about order for the rest, and it's a bit arbitrary anyway, choosing among so many lovely species. So here are nos. 5-10, rather at random:


(Boloria thore - Thor's fritillary - in Switzerland, on 5th July)


(Phengaris telejus - scarce large blue - in Switzerland on 4th July)


(Female Parnassius apollo - Apollo - apparently laying, though I'm not sure what on, on my local mountain on 30th June)


(Cupido lorquinii - Lorquin's blue - in Spain on 3rd April)


(An unusually amenable Erebia pandrose - dewy ringlet - in Switzerland on 2nd July)

And just because I like the picture, here's a helice female of Colias crocea (clouded yellow) in Málaga on 2nd April:



I know I'll suddenly think of some wonderful sighting I should have included, but this will do for now!

Guy

[petesmith]

Nice selection there Guy, with christi an unsurprising but thoroughly deserved number 1! Four of your photo's would have been life ticks for me.

I am particularly interested in your comment about tripolinus - "Carcharodus tripolinus (southern mallow skipper), ... from my spring trip to Málaga. I might have seen the latter before but I think this is the first one in a region where it could only be this, because alceae doesn't fly there."

Is alceae definitely absent from Malaga? And if so, do you know if the situation is the same in Cadiz province?

I photographed what I believe is probably tripolinus at a coastal site in Cadiz during October 2018 (see below), but at the time I believed that both alceae and tripolinus were possible IDs, and that only genital examination would confirm this. If geographical location is a reliable identifier, do you think that I could justifiably allocate this as False (or Southern) Mallow Skipper? The location was coastal, approximately 6.5km NW of Tarifa. Be interested in any comments!

[Padfield]

Hi Pete. I fear that for the time being, those of us unwilling to resort to violence to get an ID (and this is illegal in Spain anyway, without a licence) will never be 100% certain of tripolinus in Spain. According to Leraut, however, tripolinus replaces alceae in 'southernmost parts', and his map shows no alceae in either Cádiz or Málaga. His maps are not entirely reliable, but if alceae really does reach as far south as these two coastal towns it is difficult to justify the concept of it being absent from 'southernmost parts'. Very little indeed of Spain is south of this!

Tshikolovets also shows alceae as absent from Cádiz and Málaga.

Kudrna's maps, even in the latest (2020) edition, are no help, as he doesn't distinguish between the two (absence of sufficient data). I did a quick search for papers on the species and found only one from 1974.

As I'm sure you know, tripolinus is said to be on average smaller and more contrasting than alceae, but I regard this as of little help, given the huge variation within alceae.

I guess those who do resort to violence might produce more accurate maps in due course, but until then I think all you and I can say is that the evidence strongly suggests we have photographed tripolinus.

Guy

[David M]

Very nice top ten, Guy.

I know how much effort you put in to observe christi so even though it doesn't win a beauty contest it is still exceedingly worthy!

[David M]

Here are my half dozen 'also rans':

Alcon Blue - saw a few of these in the Italian Alps around midsummer's day, females as well as males. Always nice to encounter a new species, though they were tricky to get close to and tended to settle with wings closed. Here's an exception:

Lesser Spotted Fritillary - another lifer and interesting to see how much it differs from didyma. Saw three for sure in the Italian Alps, but I daresay had I had sufficient time I'd have turned up more:

Ilex and False Ilex Hairstreaks - was great to photograph these two next to one another in the French Alps. There's no mistaking them when you see them together like this:

Chequered Blue - this one posed so beautifully I couldn't resist. Probably one of my top ten favourite European butterflies:

Violet Copper - I've become slightly 'desensitised' to the sight of male helle over the years, but this was only the third female I'd ever seen:

Provence Orange Tip - it fair breaks my heart to know I won't be seeing these in 2020. For all that we love our own Orange Tips, these are in a category of their own with their delicate flight and lemon-yellow suffusion. A cloudy spell in the Pyrenees saw these two sit it out on the same perch:

[Matsukaze]

Provence Orange Tip - it fair breaks my heart to know I won't be seeing these in 2020. For all that we love our own Orange Tips, these are in a category of their own with their delicate flight and lemon-yellow suffusion. A cloudy spell in the Pyrenees saw these two sit it out on the same perch:

4POTpair(1).jpg

Another fan. I have been trying to establish its foodplant in the garden as a tribute to it and in the hope of encouraging it to move north, but the plant does not persist from one year to the next.

[Nigel Kiteley]

David, that Chequered Blue's a stunner!! Never seen one flat open, what a cracking shot.

[petesmith]

David, that Chequered Blue's a stunner!! Never seen one flat open, what a cracking shot.

I will second Nigel's comment - an absolute cracker of a Chequered Blue shot there David!

[Roger Gibbons]

I agree with Pete and Nigel’s comments on that Chequered Blue (S. orion), an absolute stunner. It is a very blue female, as well. The conventional wisdom re the sexes is that the females have very limited blue, but this has not been my experience as I have seen females that are quite blue and males that are not so blue.

On the occasions that I have seen orion with open wings – not a big deal as the underside is exceptional, too – they have only been at 90 degrees, never fully open. Was this an early morning shot, David?

On the subject of favourites from 2019, here are two species that are very scarce and highly localised in France, albeit nothing exciting to look at:
Mountain Small White (P. ergane)

Its localities are limited to the Clarée valley in eastern France and the foothills of the eastern Pyrénées, although it may have already disappeared from the Clarée valley in the Hautes-Alpes.

It is slightly smaller than the Small White (P. rapae) and has a rather weaker flight. The key distinguishing feature from other Pieris species is that ergane does not have a unf post-discal black spot. In addition, from an upperside view alone, the apical black mark is broadly square.

And yes, it would have been a lot easier to take a photo of a Small White and just Photoshop out the unf black spot.

False Dewy Ringlet (E. sthennyo)

Even less exciting to look at, maybe, but just as exciting in terms of its rarity. Endemic to the Pyrénées but limited even there to a just a few localities. I think Guy will understand the excitement – it was until recently one of the few European species that Matt Rowlings had not seen, and that is a very small list indeed.

It is also very nervous and exceptionally difficult to approach, and when it settles, it is usually deep in the grass. I managed to get the shot of this male in the morning when it was settling on this very damp vegetation, a behaviour that only seemed to occur in the morning.

Roger

[Wolfson]

I also agree with previous comments, the Chequered Blue photograph is very special. I used to spend many hours watching these little beauties in the LaRioja region of Northern Spain. I never saw one with its wings flat open, let alone take a photograph. It’s on my increasingly long “to do next year list”.

[Medard]

A few  Chequered Blue (Scolitantides orion) all from the Pyrénées-Orientales 2015 showing quite a variation of colour.
https://jamesgibbs6929.zenfolio.com

Chequered Blue (Scolitantides orion)