Butterflies of Var, Southern France

[Padfield]

SPOOKY: I saw my first poplar admiral of the year today, somewhat improbably at 2100m on a local mountain ridge. It was a dark-form male but though it settled briefly on a spruce tree I couldn't get a picture. What a butterfly!

I'd gone up to get cranberry blues but they don't seem to be flying yet. As you say, Roger, things are very sparse indeed at altitude at the moment. But I did find several absolutely pristine male alpine arguses (Albulina orbitula) - an equally lovely blue. If the weather stays good I think things might start to take off now.




Guy

[Roger Gibbons]

I was just reading your diary, Guy, about the Poplar Admiral (couldn’t someone give it a more majestic name?). The one I watched for some 30 minutes covered about 400m of the mountain road (calling it a road is a bit of an overstatement) leading up to the Col des Champs in a fabulous display of powerful flying, settling on the road from time to time.

Yes, Martin, I was ecstatic. Shows you what a sad person I am! Memories like that tend to stick with you for a long time. The road was empty so it was just me and Mr. Populi. That’s the beauty of butterflying – moments like this just arrive out of the blue.

Guy, you also mentioned mentioned seeing a battered Green Hairstreak. Well, I saw several today, and they were all fresh! I shouldn’t be complaining about the lack of butterflies as yesterday I saw 15-20 blues puddling, mainly Escher’s, Idas and Mazarine, and today I saw an Eros Blue, not that common in France, and an Amanda’s Blue which does seem to pop up everywhere I go.

I’ll leave with a challenge to ID this blue (11934). I think the blue flush gives it away. Maybe Joan Collins would know what it is.

mystery blue_11934.JPG (136.24 KiB) Viewed 4439 times

[Padfield]

I'd go for Cupido, but I have to say I couldn't call between osiris and minimus on that view. I have a picture of spotless minimus (in the rain) from last year with even more blue than that:



HOWEVER, I didn't disturb that insect and it was at a known osiris site so it may actually have been a tiny osiris.

I think you saw the upperside and know yours was osiris...

Guy

[Roger Gibbons]

Sorry, I should have given a clue as to size. It was appreciably larger than Small or Osiris, and it was puddling in company with several normal Small Blues, although the odd one can be unusually large, so this remains a possibility. I didn’t see the upperside except in short flight and it was quite a darkish blue, even allowing for its wear. My guess would be a Green Underside Blue (glaucopsyche alexis), hence the obscure Joan Collins clue as I think she played the part (alexis, not glaucopsyche) in Dallas or some such nonsense.

[Roger Gibbons]

Bryan, I find Red Underwing Skippers can vary greatly in size, some being almost minute. I tend to find they don’t nectar very often, but do have a welcome habit of returning to the same spot to defend their territory (as Guy says), which is good because they can be difficult to follow in flight. The ones I see are rather different to the one Guy shows, having a purplish tinge to the brown (11875).

spialia sertorius_11875.JPG (177.47 KiB) Viewed 4426 times

[Padfield]

I have to say, I just can't see alexis in that butterfly, no matter how hard I try! The texture of the wings in particular, as well as the shade and extent of underside blue, just look wrong. I ruled out that and semiargus (which is also occasionally spotless) on 'jizz' when I first looked at it. My gut instinct remains Cupido. At my altitude in Switzerland, osiris is regularly as large as, or larger than, common blue, whereas some of the individuals I've seen at valley level have been tiny by comparison. Furthermore, female osiris can be very blue, even giving the impression of a dark male butterfly:



Oh well! I think this is a mystery that might never be solved, unless there is some feature of structure or venation we can go for...

Guy

[Paul]

I think if you check Tolman's european photo guide, the one with the green cover, he has a pair of mating alexi at least one of which has no marks at all... which means he may be wrong as well.... it does look v. much like both specs. I had even considered alexis for the wet one but that was very small indeed. I did think at the time I got a glimpse of blue upperside, but I've convinced myself I didn't really & gone along with cupido....

[Roger Gibbons]

Am I too late for the “More than one” photo competition?

aporia crataegi_12529.JPG (198.5 KiB) Viewed 4314 times

This is where the Wood Whites hang out for lunch.

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My third sighting of a Poplar Admiral in a week. You wait a lifetime and three come along at once. Like London buses. Compare the size of this and the Purple Emperor in Tolman & Lewington. This one was immaculate but very twitchy, so I watched for a hour or so rather than risk losing it by trying to get too close with the camera.

limenitis populi_12654.JPG (182.37 KiB) Viewed 4309 times

[Pete Eeles]

Words defy me - they really do

Let me know if you ever plan on organising a trip

Cheers,

- Pete

[Roger Gibbons]

Some highlights of 2008 so far. These are the blues, I'll put up other pages in the next few days.

http://www.butterfliesoffrance.com/2008_highlights.htm

[Roger Gibbons]

I wouldn’t be into organising a trip on commercial lines (and I have been contacted by a one or two companies about this) but if a small group of say two or three wanted to come down to Var in e.g. late May I would be happy to show you around three of four sites that have exceptional butterfly diversity and population density. I would have been totally confident about the weather and what you could expect to see... until this year when the weather has been very poor and the season retarded by a couple of weeks or so. But I think this year is the exception (OK, delete “think” replace with “hope”).

Butterflies are everywhere down here but there are some exceptional sites, albeit quite widely separated (increasing the diversity), and I would suggest visiting one a day. Maybe fly to Toulon and fly back from Nice. Would involve a bit of travelling, so maybe a hire car would be needed.

My only stipulation would be that whoever comes respects the sites and undertakes to keep them confidential. And I give no guarantees about the weather!

[FISHiEE]

Hi Roger,

I am intending to visit France May next year. I visited this April and stayed in the region of Gordes. I would be travelling alone, however I have a friend that lives near to Goult who I met up with a few times during my trip. He is seriously into his butterfly photography like myself and we would be interesting in exploring some new areas. His knowledge is limited to places generally within walking distance of his house, so I was actually able to introduce him to sites I had found in the hire car during my stay!

I would really be interested in any info you could provide aboiut sites or even show me/us to them. I am planning a stay of a couple of weeks probably.

Regards

John

[Sooty]

I've bumped this thread because of the posts about the silver line on Coenonympha spp. Here's a pic I took today near Sydney, of our Brown Ringlet (Hypocysta metirius). I've seen 5 of the 6 Aussie members of this genus, and they all have the silver line.

[Roger Gibbons]

I’ve just completed the update of my website with 300 photos taken this year, should anyone be interested.

Although the site is called Butterflies of France, I’ve come to think of butterflies in terms of their natural distribution, rather than on a country basis. However, every species that occurs in Britain also occurs in France (give or take a few different subspecies) and I have been fortunate enough to see all the “British” species in France this year, with the exception of Black Hairstreak and Lulworth Skipper (although I usually see the latter every year).

Mainland France has some 239 species (plus a few Corsica endemics), of which I have seen 199 in total, but getting life-ticks gets increasingly harder.

Here are three UK species that are rather more widespread in France than in the UK, Adonis Blue (female), Swallowtail, and Pearl-bordered Fritillary. I hope these brighten up a grey November day. Roll on next spring.

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papilio machaon_14097.JPG (198.82 KiB) Viewed 3383 times

boloria euphrosyne_07303.JPG (215.97 KiB) Viewed 3381 times

[Sylvie_h]

Thank you Roger for sharing your pictures with us.
It does brigthen things up a little bit for me especially looking at the poor weather we have here in Wales.
I can't think enough of my next holidays in 2009 and I am looking forward to go abroad again and especially France. During the winter months I keep myself busy with identifying butterflies/flowers/reptiles etc... photographed during my holidays (I took 1200 pictures in 2008). It does consume time but it is very enjoyable to do and keep me going until the next spring!!
Sylvie

[Matsukaze]

Hi folks

We are off to the Lac de Ste Croix area in the first full week of May - is the area likely to be good for butterflies? I have next to no experience of non-British species so would be quite happy to watch the common local species going about their business in the meadows. I would quite like to see Mazarine Blue, a butterfly that has long fascinated me, if it can be found in the area.

Chris.

[Roger Gibbons]

Sylvie is the expert on that area, but it's not too far from where I'll be (St Aygulf). Early May is a superb area in southern Var and I usually see 50 or 60 species before the end of April. Mazarine Blue is more of an altitude species in Var but Osiris, Green-Underside, Baton, Provence Chalk-hill and Chapman's are all probables. I'd be happy to show you a place or two. Send me a pm if that's of interest.

[Roger Gibbons]

Hi Chris,

Having actually read your post (which I clearly didn’t do very well the first time) I see you’re staying near the Lac de Ste Croix, not Lac de St Cassien, which is what I had assumed.

This area around the Verdon Gorge is magnificent and almost completely unspoilt, but you may be a little too high this early in the season, although I have found very good sites at the same sort of altitudes further east at this time. It will be worth exploring the surrounding area and you should see quite a few species new to you. I have found Turquoise Blue and Safflower Skipper in the region, two species not encountered too frequently, but this was later in the year. It’s almost high enough for the cloud cover to start mid-pm, so butterflying may be best in the middle of the day. The town of Aups, south of the Lac, is very pleasant.

There is a good location I visit regularly near Draguignan, where Spanish Festoon, Provence Orange Tip, Osiris Blue, Yellow-banded Skipper and many others should be flying, but that may be out of your radius, it being about an hour's drive south of the Lac.

[Roger Gibbons]

Just for interest, here is a male Speckled Wood of the orange, nominate form – the form found in the UK is the subspecies tircis. I think it’s as beautifully coloured as fritillaries and rather a pity this isn’t the form that is found in the UK.

[Roger Gibbons]

In case anyone should think that the butterflies in Provence are all exotic, most are, in fact, the common species encountered in the UK, although Var does have an extra 100 or so species. Orange Tip, Common Blue, Brown Argus, Small Heath are all very common here, and for the most part look identical to their UK counterparts. Wood White, and Heath, Marsh and Glanville Fritillaries are quite common and widespread, though.

We sat (we are about three miles from the south coast near Frejus) and watched a vast influx of Painted Ladies last week, about one every five seconds pinging across the sky, for a couple of hours, and this was happening everywhere around here. The numbers must have been in tens of thousands here alone.

Here are some photos from this year:
Small Heath (15044), a very underrated butterfly.

Brown Argus (14846): overheard in the snail household: “there seems to be something interfering with our TV reception…”

Wood White (14480), less common in the UK but ubiquitous in southern Europe.

Swallowtail (15140): OK, maybe this a less frequent sight in the UK (it’s the first time I’ve seen it here).