and instead of turning into village, kept on the main road. Using a well-known mapping app, all seemed fine for a few more miles, then the road went into a hillside hamlet and there it ended in a farm track that was no way suitable for my hire car, 15km short of my destination. Alternative route was a huge detour, so I cut my losses, parked up and was assessing best alternative route into adjacent hills/mountains when a chap wandered over from his vineyard. I rapidly used up my Greek, but pointing to my smartphone, saying Orvilos, showing him a butterfly on my camera screen, he seemed to understand my dilemma and indicated it was fine to leave my car under his shady tree. Got into my hiking shoes, checked I had everything for a long day hike, and my new friend reappeared with a huge handful of cherries ! What lovely generosity to a total stranger...
Walked for half an hour on scrubby hillside before vegetation and hence butterfly count improved rapidly. Felt it would be rude not to reflect the vast numbers of Painted Ladies seen, mostly very tatty, but this one seemed in good condition
A slightly battered Purple-Shot Copper presented itself
Plenty of skippers were skimming around the track and finding damp patches of earth, gravel or stone to take salts – reddish tinge suggesting this one an Orbed Red Underwing
One of the Marbled carcharodus family
And another carcharodus with more white on the upper hindwing ?
The damp earth made a good background for these puddling Wood Whites – spot of white on antennae makes them L. sinapsis
Whereas I can’t see white on the antenna of this one (not the best angle), so I’d be more confident this is Eastern Wood White, L. duponcheli
On the subject of whites, this group of puddlers were doing a Mexican wave, each jumping and fluttering in sequence. I think the black apical patch is extending to v3 or even v4 (Tolman & Lewington – Collins) to place these as Southern Small White ?
A couple of Camberwell Beauties were swooping around, coming to ground to take salts with that occasional open wing flick (should have bought the next model Lumix with video screen grab quality !), or basking open wing in trees just out of reach...
Then I came to a short section of damp track that was alive with mostly blues taking salts – both wonderful to see and frustrating to try to take overwing and nearly impossible underwing to match and try to ID. My following IDs are highly tentative and I’m more than willing to be helped here;
A group from left to right, ....?, Amanda's, Escher's ?, Mazarine
The lower left image above underside – Eastern Zephyr ?
Another group; of those with wings visible; Mazarine, Silver-studded, Common, Amanda's, Eastern Baton
A shimmering specimen with diffuse dark border, and I think the underwing image clinches this as Amanda’s Blue ?
This pair, Amanda’s lower left and similar but with black spots in submargin...?
Idas or Silver-studded ?
Also present Adonis, Common and Eastern Baton. A sudden downpour dispersed the blues, I found an overhanging rock, sheltered for about half an hour and tucked into pasta with local feta, tomatoes and parsley. As the rain ceased, it was agreeably cooler, and there were more settled specimens to observe. A couple of melitaea Fritillaries seen; Knapweed singleton and mated Spotted I think
I’d been walking for more than 4 hours, and watching butterflies with stops/starts it can be hard to judge distance, but with clouds thickening/darkening, I figured this was as close to the Bulgarian border as I was going to get, so turned and began my descent
I saw this flutter past and ran down the track to where it briefly settled – does it have sufficiently scalloped edge to wings to be a Powdered Brimstone ?
I’d seen a very crumpled looking Scarce Copper nearby, presumably freshly emerged, before seeing this specimen – wouldn’t give a glimpse of the beautiful upperwing though
At odds with the pristine puddlers I'd seen earlier, I saw this tatty specimen, notable for its size; best match I could find was Iolas - hard to tell ?
And just before the storm started a Niobe Fritillary sat up nicely on a thistle
After which I trotted back to the car to avoid a drenching, and returned to base. Sat on the balcony for final time reflecting on some great walks, scenery and the sheer volume of species and numbers of examples to delight and assault the senses. I'm a Project Director by day, so the attraction of watching butterflies is that it requires a certain amount of planning to research sites, arrive there, choose a path to travel, but then you are in the moment, seeing what is around you, sometimes chasing something unusual, sometimes the unusual just presents itself, sometimes you have to judge if staying put might induce a territorial type to return....I had a great time and I'd thoroughly recommend the area for hiking and wildlife watching. Still looking for Festoon's, Freyer's Purple, Southern Comma - maybe 2021...
Species seen (bold new to me);
papilionidae; Scarce Swallowtail, Swallowtail
pieridae; Clouded Yellow, Eastern Bath White, Wood White, Eastern Wood White, Small White, Southern Small White, Large White, Brimstone, Powdered Brimstone, Black-veined White
lycaenidae; Hairstreaks; Ilex, Purple, Green, White-letter, Brown: Coppers; Small Copper, Lesser Fiery , Scarce , Sooty , Purple-shot , Balkan : Blues; Lang's Short-tailed, Little Tiger, Holly, Small, Osiris, Iolas, Eastern Baton, Eastern Zephyr, Silver-studded, Idas, Mazarine, Escher's, Amanda's, Anomolous, Adonis, Common, Brown Argus, Mountain Argus
libytheidae; Nettle-Tree Butterfly
nymphalidae; Southern-White Admiral, Camberwell Beauty, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Large Tortoiseshell, Red Admiral, Painted Lady, Comma; Fritillaries; Queen of Spain, Cardinal, Silver-washed, Niobe, Marbled, Pearl-bordered, Glanville, Knapweed, Spotted, Lesser Spotted, Heath
satyridae; Marbled White, Balkan Marbled White, Grayling, Southern Grayling, Hermit, Great Banded Grayling, Woodland Ringlet, Bright-eyed Ringlet, Meadow Brown, Speckled Wood, Wall Brown, Large Wall Brown, Northern Wall Brown, Lattice Brown
hesperidae; Grizzled, Yellow-banded, Orbed Red Underwing, Marbled, Tufted Marbled, Oriental Marbled, Dingy, Essex, Small, Large
