Padfield

[Padfield]

We stayed local today, taking the télécabine up the mountain and walking down by a scenic route.

Cloud greeted us at the top, and it was on and off cloudy all day (building up to storms by late afternoon, as always):



Despite this, there was enough sun to pick up some year ticks on the way down - and much more besides.

This is an alpine grizzled skipper - a large and very distinctive Pyrgus:



Here is a grizzled skipper, from the same site, for comparison:



At the same site were marsh fritillaries, a second year tick. I am never sure what to call Swiss marshies. This first one corresponds to what Leraut and others call Euphydryas merope (what Tshikolovets calls Euphydryas glaciegenita:



This one, on the other hand, looks much more like Euphydryas aurinia. They were flying together and I imagine they are the same species:



Glanville fritillaries present no such problems:





Adonis, common, mazarine and little blues were all out in good numbers. The little blues were quickly addicted to my backpack and a small cloud lifted up when I picked it up to go:





A third year tick, quite common on the walk home, was geranium argus. This butterfly is common in the Alps wherever wood cranesbill flowers:






Here are a common blue, an Adonis blue and a mazarine blue to finish:







Guy

[Wurzel]

A cracking collection Guy - that Alpine Grizzlie does look very distinctive - I think even I might be able to ID that one Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

I think you must be pretty good with European species by now, Wurzel! Don't deprecate yourself!

Minnie's pretty good too. Here she is with a green hairstreak she found on our morning walk:



I also came across this grizzlie, form taras, not far away:



It's the second taras I've seen in Leysin, the first being on my recce last May, before I moved here. It was 400m lower down the mountain than the previous one, but obviously the gene is in the area. I lived ten years in Huémoz without seeing a single one locally.

I've never found taras in Pyrgus malvoides. Although these two species are indistinguishable, they have discrete distributions in Switzerland, with the boundary line lying on the north side of the Rhône Valley. Their maps can be found here:

Pyrgus malvae : http://lepus.unine.ch/carto/31018

Pyrgus malvoides : http://lepus.unine.ch/carto/31019

Guy

[Wurzel]

Cheers Guy although I did come a cropper recently and tried to turn a Green-veined into a Black-veined

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

To be fair, Wurzel, it did look a lot like a black-veined white!

Yesterday we headed to Grenoble (up at 03h00 so Minnie could have a walk before spending a lot of the day on trains), where a friend met us and drove us to the last site in eastern France for false ringlet, Coenonympha oedippus. He kindly entertained Minnie while I walked the boardwalks around the marsh. Sadly, no amount of patient watching and waiting enabled me to spot a single oedippus lurking in the vegetation, and when I bumped into the warden he told me none had been seen at all yet this year. Things were about three weeks behind normal. No problem: we can do it again in July!

My friend knew several spots for large copper nearby, and though the first brood of this species is virtually over now, we did find a single female - showing her age:



This was a big plus, as I had failed to find large copper on my earlier trip around Swiss sites. Also new for the year here was lesser purple emperor, form clytie, which came zooming into view a couple of times, looking so orange I initially mistook the first one for a large fritillary.

Some lakes near the marsh supported very good populations of dragonflies, including lots of scarce chasers - a species I've never got photographs of before. Here is a male perched:



And here is a close-up of a pair in cop - position 96 in the pop-up Kāmasūtra, I think ...



Azure damselflies were at it too:



Here is a more chaste white-legged damselfly:



We returned to Switzerland on the 14h58 from Grenoble, arriving back in Leysin before 19h00, content but very sleepy!

Today we stayed local and went high:



This panoramic shot from La Riondaz (1891m) shows the Rhône Valley from the Massif du Muveran on the left all the way to Lac Léman on the right:



There is still relatively little at altitude, though several swallowtails were hilltopping at La Riondaz and we saw northern walls not far below:





Other species on the wing at altitude were green hairstreak, marsh fritillary, pearl-bordered fritillary, wall, little blue, small tortoiseshell, alpine grizzled skipper and large white.

Coming down again, I got my first year tick of the day at about 1660m in the form of a spanking fresh alpine heath:



And then a second - a beautiful tufted marbled skipper. Something has happened symmetrically to the fringes of its forewings near the apex but otherwise it seems very fresh:



That was at 1650m, in a meadow abounding with butterflies. I stood on a rock and watched common blues, Adonis blues, mazarine blues, little blues, marsh fritillaries, Glanville fritillaries, Berger's clouded yellows and more while Minnie sheltered in some long grass:



The mountains are coming alive at last!

Guy

[Matsukaze]

We very nearly met up at that oedippus site yesterday, as we were unexpectedly detained in Grenoble and my wife suggested a visit (we have repeatedly failed to find the insect here before). I hadn't slept for 36 hours, though, and was too exhausted to contemplate chasing butterflies around marshland. Maybe another day...

[Wurzel]

Love the look of the Alpine Heath Guy My favourite photo though has to be the final one - there's someone loving life

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[David M]

...Things were about three weeks behind normal...

That's some deviation to the norm, Guy!!

I'll be in the Queyras in a week's time. Goodness knows what will (or won't) be on the wing. These seasons are all over the place these last few years.

[Matsukaze]

...Things were about three weeks behind normal...

That's some deviation to the norm, Guy!!

I'll be in the Queyras in a week's time. Goodness knows what will (or won't) be on the wing. These seasons are all over the place these last few years.

12/6 to 15/6, around 1600-2000 m in the valley bottoms - Dingy Skipper, Marsh Fritillary (lots), PBF (lots, recently emerged by the look of it), Pyrgus spp (plenty, mostly malvoides, some sertorius and a few others), Green-veined White, Adonis Blue, Small Blue, Orange-tip, Small Tortoiseshell (a few fresh, possibly second brood), Mazarine Blue, Northern(?) Wall Brown, Wood White sp. (fairly common), Glanville Fritillary, Green Hairstreak, Common Blue (very few),Small White. A couple of blues/fritillaries to add to this list once I've worked out what they are. Weather was poor when we went up the cols and not much about, a Small Blue about 2.7 km from the top of the Col d'Agnel being the highest. There's substantial construction work and earth-moving at the top of the Col de l'Izoard, confined in area to the road but quite noisy - they clock off at 12 sharp though I'm not sure when they restart...

[kevling]

Hi Guy,

Nice catching up with your diary. I love the head on view of the Glanville Fritillary and that Alpine Heath is a stunner. Minnie did well to observe the Green Hairstreak so close. No chance of that with my Millie, she just flushes butterflies out for me.

Kind Regards
Kev

[Padfield]

Hi Matsukaze. I'm amazed we haven't bumped into each other in Málaga before now, as we're both regulars, but I never expected such a narrow miss in France! You did the right thing, evidently ...

Alpine heaths are lovely butterflies, Wurzel, and part of quite a complex process of speciation which is probably still going on today. But yes, Minnie wins hands down.

I haven't had time recently to follow all your latest adventures, David, but look forward very much to catching up on them. You do get a lot of European butterflying in these days! Are you managing to keep it under 90 days per 180?

Thanks Kev. Here's one for you then: Minnie standing stock still next to a hilltopping swallowtail:



The reason I haven't had much time recently is that my sister and nephew drove out in a van with my last belongings from the UK, and while they were here we scattered my father's ashes with my mother's, in the local mountains. They left today and after I had waved the van down the hill I quickly headed off to the high mountains of eastern Valais for some altitude stuff. As expected, it's late - I saw no Cynthia's fritillaries, for example - but there was actually a very strong wind today and it was mostly cloudy at the altitudes where cynthia flies. Here are a few piccies from the day.

First, I think, two mountain fritillaries and a shepherd's fritillary, in that order:







I'd be interested to know if other alpine experts agree. It was too cold for any of them to show their undersides and I wasn't carrying a net.

Eros blues are now flying, though in small numbers:



Idas blues were also on the wing:



One of my favourite blues, not just for its unique underside but also its gleaming upperside, is the alpine argus:





As well as the mountain and shepherd's fritillaries, Grison's and false heath were flying:





I was hoping for sooty ringlets and maybe saw some, but they never stopped. This Mnestra ringlet did stop ...



... as did this dewy ringlet:



I'm not sure about the next Erebia. It was the size of mnestra but not that, and I would be interested in others' views:





The only skipper flying up at 2500m was dusky grizzled:



This moth is Setina ramosa, a local but not rare alpine speciality:





Poor old Minnie had to be on the lead much of the time, as there were marmots everywhere:





She's been really slow in the heat recently (she's 11 and a half years old) but was bouncy as a puppy up the mountain today!



In the evening, a great storm struck Leysin:





Guy

[Padfield]

Vincent Baudraz (of https://lepido.ch/) has kindly confirmed my unidentified ringlet is indeed another mnestra. I had more or less ruled that out as it just didn't look right, but I shouldn't have done!

Guy

[Wurzel]

A fantastic collection there Guy Are there any key things to look for when differentiating Shepherds and Mountain Frits as to an untrained/my eye they look too similar although the 3rd seems to have orange fringe hairs unlike the first two?

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

Hi Wurzel. With males of mountain and shepherd's fritillary (of the alpine subspecies, palustris) the uppersides alone are inconclusive. Females are easy from either upperside or underside. All the features I use for males fail some of the time and if I want to be certain which species flies in a particular locality I wait for the females to appear. I happen to know from past experience that both fly at the site where I was yesterday, so I didn't mind giving them putative IDs, even if they're not 100% certain. NEVERTHELESS, and just for you, I've put those three individuals next to each other on a single piccie (had to flip the wing of the shepherd's fritillary) and picked out the things I look for :



Guy

[David M]

That's an extremely useful diagnostic for those montane Fritillaries, Guy, both of which I struggle with when I see them in the field (the males, at least).

Those are excellent images of the Swiss storm you encountered. Seems to be a lot of that kind of weather in the Alps this summer.

[Padfield]

Hi David. The ‘live’ function on an iPhone starts recording about a second before you press the ‘shutter’ and continues a second or so after (i.e., it is constantly recording and erasing on a rolling basis). Although by default the live function is disabled at night, being replaced by flash or long exposure, it can be manually enabled. Thus, you point the iPhone in the right direction, wait for the flash, click the ‘shutter’ and magically record the lightning that has just lit up the sky. You can then edit the image and choose which you want to be the main frame. I put three frames recorded like this together to make a gif:



Using just three frames makes a smaller file size than using the whole live recording as a gif.

Guy

[Padfield]

I spent a very pleasant morning with my local cranberry fritillaries. They were out in very good numbers today - so much so that at one point, where marsh cinquefoil was growing in abundance, I counted 15 in one field of vision. This plant is evidently particularly attractive to them and I think it was the only thing I saw them nectaring on:


(males)


(males)


(normal female)


(female with abnormally white bands on the underside)


(male on the foodplant)


(male on the foodplant)


(male)


(female)


(female)


(the breeding habitat - dense Vaccinium bog)

Here is a short and rather poor video of a female on marsh cinquefoil. This plant doesn't grow in the dense parts of the Vaccinium bog but rather around the edges:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awhiHtZgYEY

I saw plenty else besides, but my main mission was to watch the cranberry frits and the weather was rather iffy so time was a premium. Here are a few of the other species flying today, when cloud didn't completely cover the sky:


(the almost unmarked ups of the local northern brown argus)


(the same butterfly)


(false heath fritillary remained on the wing even under 100% cloud cover)


(the same individual)


(the first large ringlets are flying)


(Arran browns have been on the wing a while)


(lesser marbled fritillary is common here)


(habitat of lesser marbled fritillary - damp fields of meadowsweet)


(bright-eyed ringlets were attracted to my patent non-leather boots)


(this was my first silver-studded blue of the year)


(it didn't offer its upperside, but when the wind blew the wings parted just enough for me to confirm it wasn't idas)

Guy

[Wurzel]

Thanks for the ID tips Guy I had a good look when you first posted them up but I don't know what's happened int he meantime as I can't see them, or your most recent images? Hopefully it's just my machine being a it laggy

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

Hi Wurzel. If you reload the page the pictures should reappear. If the internet is slow, some browsers give up when they have to load as many pictures as I post!

Guy

[David M]

Thanks for the details regarding your images of the lightning bolts, Guy. It's amazing what modern technology can do.

Love those Cranberry Fritillaries, as species I have yet to see and would really like to.

That female with the broad, white stripe is absolutely fabulous.