November in Switzerland

[Padfield]

After a fairly hellish couple of weeks moving house, I had time to go butterflying down in the valley today.

Very little still flying here. I was pleased to see Queen of Spain for the 11th consecutive month (but I fear very little chance of getting one in December):



Wall browns were much commoner:




Clouded yellows and Berger's clouded yellows are still about:


(Clouded yellows)

(Berger's)

Lastly, a single small white:



At altitude (well, my new house - c.1000m) I saw a red admiral flying two days ago.

Guy

[Denise]

I'm quite envious Guy, all I'm seeing is an odd Red Admiral.
Glad that your house move is complete and that your back with us.
You've been missed.

Denise

[Padfield]

Thanks Denise!

Guy

[Dave McCormick]

Nice guy your still finding those about, I have saw nothing since start of October or around. But it has been mostly cold and wet here quite a lot, so I guess the butterfly season here is over for this year.

[Matsukaze]

Guy, I found this link which I thought might be of interest to you:

http://ia310809.us.archive.org/3/items/ ... 00whee.pdf

[Padfield]

That's amazing, Mat. This is an absolutely fascinating book, and although the distribution of butterflies on the plateau has transformed out of all recognition since 1903 (apparently there was a reduction of 99% in the total number of butterflies on the plateau between the beginning of the 20th century and 1987) there might even be very useful insights for the distribution of the true alpine species.

Great Christmas present - and happy Christmas to you!

Guy

[Matsukaze]

Thanks - glad you enjoyed it! It would be amazing if it turned up some still existing populations of scarce butterflies.

[Matsukaze]

Here's another article you might find of interest

http://www.archive.org/details/magazineofnatura08loud (pages 205-220 of the magazine - the PDF takes an age to download).

This is an interesting site which has a lot of old periodicals. The one linked to here dates from about 1837.