Padfield

[Padfield]

Hi Wurzel. I never tire of beautiful views - and never did while I lived in the UK, either. Lingering, Suffolk sunsets are every bit as uplifting as alpine vistas! And I agree, Damon blues are very smart butterflies.

Hi David. The butterflies are more visible now but it is feeling distinctly end-of-season. The recovery was too late for some ...

Minnie woke me at 03h30 on Thursday and I assumed she needed to do something so got up and took her outside. When I opened the front door of the building, a beautiful sight greeted me: Mars and Jupiter in conjunction in a perfectly clear sky. This photo doesn't do it justice at all, especially as for some reason both Mars and Aldebaran have lost their redness:



It's not obvious, but Uranus is also in the picture, to the right of the Pleiades. This key shows where:



And a view over Leysin, with the red light of the Grand Chamossaire on the right:



Minnie didn't seem to have needed anything urgent but I was happy to get the unexpected walk and went back to sleep afterwards!

The next (technically, the same) day - yesterday - I took Minnie up the Grand Chamossaire to see what Erebia were now flying there. As so often this year, little was on the wing altogether, but I got my first meolans of the year, as well as melampus, manto, aethiops and what I took in the field to be a very late medusa. This is the butterfly in question:



It was as big as meolans and its undersides were the same as its uppersides. Bit of a puzzler! Here it is with a Piedmont ringlet:



Common hawkers were zooming over a stagnant pool near the Petit Chamossaire and this black darter decided to use my backpack as its resting spot:





Cloud and rain today, sadly, as it is the first day of the annual 'Nuit des fées' festival, when the young and old of Leysin celebrate tiny, winged sprites of a non-butterfly nature!

Guy

[Wurzel]

Cracking Black Darter Guy I don't think I've ever knowingly seen a male, something I need to rectify one year

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[David M]

Not sure your opinion regarding 'not doing justice' is appropriate, Guy.

Those are excellent images of the night sky, clearly showing the celestial bodies you were looking for.

[Padfield]

Hi Wurzel. Black darter seems to be quite a late species. I've often found them in association with blackthorn, while I've been looking for brown hairstreaks.

Thanks David. But it really was much more beautiful in real life!

Last night's celestial phenomenon was the supermoon. After a cloudy day, the evening was suddenly clear and I caught several photos of her rising:







Guy

[Padfield]

The water ringlet, Erebia pronoe, has featured in quite a few trip reports recently. In Switzerland we have a distinct subspecies of this butterfly, E. p. vergy, in which the male is very dark and the upperside markings are vestigial or absent. The female has some upperside markings but they are reduced. It was rather cloudy and cool today on my local mountain, with some sun, and a male water ringlet was good enough to sit out one cloudy spell right in front of me:



The red mite is common on Erebia and doesn't seem to cause them any discomfort or harm.

The underside has a characteristic hint of violet in its scaling:



I used flash for that picture as I was looking into the sun and didn't want to risk disturbing him by going round to the other side.

There are still purple-edged coppers around:



I thought I'd see a lot of aberrations this year, with all the weird weather and late snow early in the season, but I haven't. I did find this aberrant chalk-hill blue today, though. I had followed it because it was particularly small and seemed the wrong blue colour. Only when it settled did I see it had an unspotted underside hindwing:





Cool weather has its advantages. As I reached Leysin village, this great banded grayling dropped right in front of me. Normally this is a very wary species and difficult to approach:



Guy

[Padfield]

It's now cool enough for me to walk Minnie in the Rhône Valley again! There, the season is going through its usual August wind-down rituals, and though numbers were low, most species were present and correct.

Dryads were past their prime but enjoying life. Here is one with a meadow brown:



There's another in the background with this southern white admiral:



There were a fair few fresh spotted fritillaries:



I watched a female swallowtail laying her eggs - without ever stopping. She would fly in, press the egg against a leaf and fly off again, all in one, swift movement:



Here are two of her eggs from that patch (the second one is the one she laid in the picture above):





I don't think this male can be the father as he looks as if he emerged just today:



Graylings and tree graylings are on the wing. They usually fly through into the winter. Whites, including Bath whites and wood whites, and all the usual yellows are still common; but I saw no skippers today. Normally there are mallow skippers here in August but I haven't seen a mallow skipper all year. There weren't even any dingies today. For the blues, there were common, Adonis, turquoise and Provençal short-tailed, but they were thin on the ground. Even Queens of Spain were sparse. Valais was hit very badly by the storms and flooding earlier in the year.

At Sierre station, I was the only person to notice what I think is a canary, hunting seeds on the railway lines. I first thought it was a partially albino sparrow (I have seen a completely white sparrow before, at Martigny station):



Then it came closer and the yellow became more apparent:







The most bizarre thing was that no one else gave it a second glance, even though I was training my telephoto lens on it! If it is a canary, I hope it is able to survive the winter.

Guy

[Padfield]

I worked all morning and didn't get out for a butterfly walk until 15h00. I decided to visit my local 'tails' site, where all three Swiss tailed blues fly: long-tailed, short-tailed and Provençal short-tailed. Of these, Provençal is resident and generally common in Switzerland, short-tailed resident but rather local and uncommon, and long-tailed solely a migrant.

Immediately on arriving at the site, I immediately spotted a very worn male short-tailed blue:



EDIT: Looking at the picture, I suddenly wonder whether that isn't a very blue female ... I took it to be a male in flight but I think I was wrong.

I had visited in April and seen none, so was very glad to find the second brood. Most of the males were past their prime but there were females too, and these were mostly in better nick. Here is one laying on red clover:



She then took a well-earned breather:



I was also delighted to find at least a dozen long-tailed blues. The site is a hill in the Rhône Valley, with a couple of bladder senna bushes. Every year, long-tailed blues find their way here, even though the species is generally sparse - these were my first of 2024. Because it was hot and late, the males were very active. I didn't see a single one settle even a moment. Fortunately, it is a very easy species to identify in flight, not least because whenever they meet their own kind, the males immediately spiral many metres - often tens of metres - into the air. So for over half an hour I stood there, going dizzy watching them, waiting for one to stop, but none did. There were a couple of females (perhaps more), instantly recognisable because when the males encountered them they chased them, rather than zooming into the air. The females seemed to want to stop but the males wouldn't let them. Then eventually, a female landed deep in the vegetation and I was able to get a proof shot:



I didn't search for Provençal short-tailed blue because I wanted to check out a brown hairstreak site at the bottom of the hill. By now it was 17h00 but it was still warm and things were still flying. Sadly, these didn't include the hairstreaks. There were whole swathes of mountain garlic here, which proved a great attractant for the evening butterflies, including common blues and more short-tailed blues:





There were also Provençal short-tailed blues, though only one stopped, and in a very awkward place to get a picture:



Guy