Padfield

[Padfield]

I couldn't post last night because when I nipped out to take my bottles and jars to the recycling - which should have been 10 minutes there and back - I found myself completely cut off from the hostal and it took me over an hour to get home again. Everywhere I turned there was either a procession or a seething mass of people waiting to see the procession. Don't get me wrong - it's all very impressive and wonderful to witness. But when you have to get up at 03h00 to get to the airport it can also be quite trying! This was the road leading directly to my hostal:



The Marys were going in the same direction as I wanted to and there was no way I could compete. I backed off, looped round to the other side of the cathedral and found more processions and crowds there. Thanks to Google maps and some sneaky cuts I did eventually make it home.

I spent the day in the chalk hills above Benalmádena, hoping to find some more Portuguese dappled white. Maybe I did - the terrain was perfect - but none stopped for a photo and I don't carry a net in Spain (it's illegal). In total, at the sites I thought most likely, I saw about half a dozen - maybe more - rather small individuals of Euchloe sp., all of the spotty, not stripy, variety. Here's one in flight over the rocky slope:



Blowing up that picture didn't help.

I came down the mountain via the scenic route - i.e., straight down through the scrub and bushes - and there, on the lower slopes, I saw only western dappled white.

Most striking today were the green hairstreaks, of which I saw dozens:



On parts of my walk down they were flying up in threes and fours around my feet.

I didn't have time to process many pictures last night but here are a couple of nice lizards. First, an ocellated lizard (I thought it was a western green lizard but have just checked and I was wrong):





And next an Iberian wall lizard:



Swallowtails were a constant presence, at the bottom of the hill as well as right at the top:



Other species today were speckled wood, Spanish festoon, Cleopatra and Provence orange tip (very common).

In summary: Seven days in southern Spain, over 200km walked, good sun on 6 of the 7 days (plus the half day when I arrived) and hazy sun on one day, 35 species of butterfly in total.

It will be interesting to see how butterfly life in the Alps has progressed since I left!

Guy

[Wurzel]

Fantastic sightings Guy It was interesting to see Spanish, Provence and Western prefixes as I was getting a few Eastern and Southern Corfu was great - nowhere near as many species as yourself but still fantastic. They cater well for Vegans but the roads are atrocious

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

Hi Wurzel. I'm so glad you had a good time in Corfu, and interesting that they cater well for vegans. It will be good to see your pictures when you've sorted through them, though I note your personal diary is barely into August 2022 so I guess it might be a while ... And yes, a lot of butterflies have virtually indistinguishable eastern and western counterparts: eastern and western dappled whites, eastern and western Bath whites, eastern and (western) baton blues &c.

If you have any problematic IDs, it's worth knowing that Pamperis has an AI butterfly recognition page for Greece. You just upload your photo and it returns the species. I've tried it with some of my own photos and it's good:

https://pamperis.gr/recognition/index.html

Naughtily, I also uploaded the photo of 'pandora', which is actually paphia, from Pamperis's own, otherwise excellent book on the butterflies of Greece! The programme returned 'paphia' with near 100% certainty.

Guy

[Wurzel]

Thanks for that link Guy - I've got a few big lemon and lime butterflies so I'll see if any of those are Powdered Brimstones
"Naughtily, I also uploaded the photo of 'pandora', " this made me chuckle lots

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[David M]

...In summary: Seven days in southern Spain, over 200km walked, good sun on 6 of the 7 days (plus the half day when I arrived) and hazy sun on one day, 35 species of butterfly in total...

That's a highly satisfactory return for early April, Guy. It'd take me till mid-July to top that total here in the UK.

Can't wait to get out there myself in just over a week's time. Right now it's wet and blowing a 50mph gale here in south Wales!!

[Padfield]

I hope you have a great time there, David. The jasius will definitely still be on the wing and much more will have emerged by then. I do hope you're lucky with the weather, though it does tend to stabilise as the year goes on, so you shouldn't need as much luck as I did. As you drive to places, you should be able to find much more than I did - a lot of those 200km walked were simply getting to places, not watching butterflies!

Since getting back to CH I've had just one sunny day - Easter day. From Easter Monday the rains set in ... But I added a few species to my 2023 year list on the Sunday.

First, I found Camberwell beauties were now on the wing. Four were defending territories at one of their regular spots:



Also new for the year were scarce swallowtail, wood white, large wall, dingy skipper, Glanville fritillary and Berger's clouded yellows. Of these species, I only took photos of scarce swallowtail and dingy skipper:





Surprisingly, I saw just one southern grizzled skipper and no rosy grizzlies:



Having just returned from prime hoopoe country, I was especially pleased to spot a hoopoe silhouetted against the snowy mountains:



This species is regular but not particularly common in the Rhône Valley.

I also watched a distant golden eagle being mobbed and chased away by a buzzard. It would have been wonderful if it had passed overhead, as I think it intended:





I don't mind the present rain at all. The plants need it, and the butterflies need the plants. I'm sure the sun will be back soon.

Guy

[Wurzel]

Cracking view of the Scarce Swallowtail Guy, interesting angle that shows off the geometric shapes brilliantly Thank you for that web link - so far it's refused any attempt at Powdered Brimstone but I think they've only got one record of it from Corfu anyway but it's showing all of my Green-veined Whites at balcana complex, the Balkans Green-veined White - whether this is like the Pied/White Wagtail situation in the bird world I'm not sure?

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

HI Wurzel. I don't know which reference books you've got to help you. In general, Pieris balcana (= Pieris pseudorapae according to Leraut) and Pieris napi are said to be indistinguishable without resorting to violence, though Pamperis suggests the first brood do look different. In this brood, he says, the veins on the underside hindwing are lined strongly grey in balcana but only very lightly grey in napi. I'd be interested to know what percentage confidence the ID engine gives for its determination of your butterflies as balcana.

Both species fly in Greece, and sometimes at the same localities. It's a tricky one!

Guy

[David M]

Thanks, Guy. I'm pretty confident things will be okay; it's just a couple of target species that may no longer be on the wing that concern me.

There's nothing you can do about the season though, and it will certainly be better than last year's visit when abnormally cool and cloudy conditions made it tough going.

...First, I found Camberwell beauties were now on the wing. Four were defending territories at one of their regular spots...

That's one species you won't see in Andalusia!!

Beautiful podalirius as well. Lovely, rich yellow ground colour and all wing parts intact!

[Wurzel]

Cheers Guy - I put two different individuals through and one came back 99.72% and the other 99.75% so pretty confident. I also put through a definite Nettle Tree butterfly and that came back at 99.77% which makes it seem even more reliable. Tolman isn't up to much in this case but the images do look similar to those on Euro Butterflies so you never know

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

Hi David. I hope you have a wonderful time. I'm sure you'll find your target species, and who knows what else besides? No Camberwell beauties, though, as you say ...

Since I got back to Switzerland it's been mostly rain and snow (both today, as it happens - one minute I look out and it's raining, the next I see great white flakes floating down). On Monday this week there was sun and I was free in the morning, so I zoomed off to the valley to see how the season was doing. I expected to see chequered blues, as these emerge as early as mid-March here and are usually around in good numbers by mid-April. But none! I did see my first green-underside blue of the year:



That is closely related to the black-eyed blues I was seeing in Spain, but altogether brighter and more spring-like!

Also new for the year were southern small white, common blue and mallow skipper (in Spain the few common blues I saw were Austaut's blues, Polyommatus celina, and the single mallow skipper was false mallow, Carcharodus tripolinus). This brought my 2023 list up to 56 species.

I had seen Glanville fritillary the previous Saturday, but on Monday one actually settled for me to take a photo:



I also watched a female clouded yellow laying eggs - on Vicia tenuifolia I think:



Some years, clouded yellows don't survive the winter and we don't see them until later in the year, when they arrive as migrants. This year they have been numerous - and they were the commonest butterfly on Monday.

This picture of a red kite in Leysin on Sunday sums up the scene in the mountains at the moment:



The blackthorn is only just coming into flower and it will be a little while before I can put my brown hairstreaks out.

Guy

[Padfield]

With Pauline and others reporting Dukes, I decided to head up my local mountain to the patch where I found Dukes on 22nd May last year (on a trip out from England). I didn't expect them to be flying yet, especially as it was a rather cold and mostly cloudy day, but I wanted to see how things were progressing. The answer:


(this is the meadow right next to where the Dukes were flying, which was covered in marsh frits, Glanville frits and heath frits on that day last year)


(this is the exact spot where I photographed Dukes, grizzlies (inlcuding taras) and alpine grizzled skipper - it will be very interesting to see if all these species really do come out in the next month!)

No butterflies! Minnie seemed very energetic and wanted to keep going, so we headed on up into the snow:



Here is a nutcracker we saw on the way:





And here is a ring ouzel, singing his heart out from a little island of trees in the snow:





When we reached the little village of Berneuse, it looked as if some pretty grim weather was heading our way ...



... so we headed back down the mountain along a ski run:



Amazingly, although it really wasn't good weather, we saw two small tortoiseshells on the way down. This is the first, and in context:





The mountains are not butterfly-ready yet!!

Guy

[Wurzel]

Cracking shots of the Nutcracker and Ring Ousel Guy This spring does seem to be a late starter - a Blackthorn Winter as my dad calls it

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[essexbuzzard]

Love the nutcracker, Guy. What a fabulous picture!

Some lovely winter scenery there, too!

[David M]

It's incredible what the weather can do in your part of Europe, Guy. It's been a particularly weird few months with Spain threatening 40c in April whereas further east many places are having abnormally cool & wet conditions.

Congrats for getting such a fine shot of the nutcracker. It was hardly vying for position amongst butterflies.

[Padfield]

Thanks Wurzel, Buzzard and David. Yes, the weather has been very variable recently. As recently as 25th April I woke up to snow at my altitude:



This was the view outside my window while I was teaching (at a school in Chesières, at about 1250m):



But the snow can melt as quickly as it comes, and by 27th it felt quite springlike in the mountains again. Sadly, I had destroyed my camera in the meantime by unknowingly submerging it - and not noticing until it was too late. I dried it out and the electronics now work but the lens doesn't. So I had to pull an old camera out of retirement to photograph this orange tip on 27th, my first at altitude for the year:



It's still only early spring up here and the only other things flying were brimstones and a single comma.



Today it is pouring with rain so I decided to attach my brown hairstreak eggs to the blackthorn on my balcony. I had six eggs in total in my fridge, rescued from cut branches last year. Here are two of them:





My blackthorn is well in advance of the wild ones at this altitude, which are yet to show any flowers. I'm hoping the larvae will synchronise with the weather, not just with the state of the plant. I've ordered a large, permeable winter sheath for the blackthorn for when the larvae have started growing, to stop them wandering off in search of other plants.

Guy

[Wurzel]

Sad news about your camera Guy Makes me think that I need to get a back-up ready myself Great to see that Orange-tip - it's brightened up what has been a very grey day

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[David M]

Good luck with those Hairstreaks, Guy.

Shame to hear about your camera. I guess you'd had it for many years?

[Padfield]

Thanks David and Wurzel. The camera loss was stupid! I was actually rescuing some earthworms from the bottom of a cattle trough and didn't notice my camera bag get dunked. Only about half an hour later, when the camera electronics went crazy and started communicating with my iPhone did I realise something was amiss, and by then it was too late. The camera had served me well for nearly 5 years and was still taking good pictures but I had had to replace the LCD screen once and it was becoming a little unreliable. Thanks to those worms, I now have a new camera - almost the same model but slightly updated.

I got the new camera yesterday, and because I was teaching all day didn't get a chance to try it out until the evening, when the only thing worth photographing was the moon:



Today, though, I had a chance to go to the Rhône Valley, as it was sunny and I didn't have to work in the morning. I went to my Iolas blue site to see how the bladder senna was progressing - or even if there was any left now, as it has become increasingly overgrown with bushes. There was still a little, but it was not in flower (except for one bush, with a few flowers) and some was barely in leaf, suggesting a very late year for this butterfly. In fact, almost nothing was flying. It was amazing to be in the Rhône Valley in May, on a hot day, and to see so few butterflies. I would expect to be getting year ticks by the minute, but no - just a handful of old familiars. It rained in Switzerland while I was away in Spain at the beginning of April and it has rained or snowed almost continuously since I got back. This has evidently taken its toll on the butterflies.

What little was flying was very, very active, as if carpe diem had taken hold of all their psyches. They were right - the weather is set to change again and in the worst case this could be their last day for a while at least. I headed back from the Iolas blue site to a site nearer to Martigny and found the same - almost nothing on the wing, but what was on the wing was zooming around without ever stopping, or stopping for seconds at a time and then buzzing off again. I don't think I've ever known a day like it. The good news is that the new camera is quite good at getting long-distance, snatched photos of butterflies. Sadly, I didn't have any opportunities to try it out for decent pictures. Here are a few from today:




(This female chequered blue was one of just three I saw. This is quite amazing: normally I would see dozens at this site in May. In a normal year they emerge in mid-April and in an early year in March)


(Buttercups are not good flowers for butterfly photography, as the butterflies spend so little time at each flower. This is a male Berger's clouded yellow)


(Even the dingy skippers barely stopped flying. They normally enjoy sitting around in the basking position)


(A snatched Glanville fritillary. These were common today but incredibly restless)


(One of just three southern grizzled skippers (malvoides) seen today. Again, I had expected to see dozens)

In short, the rains have taken their toll this spring. They were needed after a particularly dry winter, but the butterflies now need a chance to crack open those chrysalids and celebrate the summer to come!

Guy

[Pauline]

Some very nice butterfly shots there Guy but you probably won't be surprised to learn that my favourites without a shadow of doubt are your beautiful scenic ones of Minnie in the snow . Thank you for sharing.