In answer to the first question: at about 5.00am, when the hot-water bottle has cooled down to body temperature, the cat joins me under the bedclothes. Very snug.Lee Hurrell wrote:
Crikey Guyhow do you keep warm?
When do you think you will see this year's first (and was last year's a hibernater or emergee?) given the (presumably) worse weather for you in CH this year?
As to the second, I really don't know! In the mountains, the date of the first butterfly is very variable (last year's 2nd Feb was at 1000m) and may be in January or as late as March. In recent years there has been very heavy snowfall in March/April and even after the first flight there may be long periods of white chill with nothing on the wing. Last year was our coldest winter for decades and even the Rhône Valley didn't get going until the middle of March. But after the Equinox, things change at a tremendous rate. Last year I photographed chequered blues on 14th April, just two days later than my earliest ever record at the same site (which was in April 2007). So the harsh winter clearly didn't hold them back.
Guy
EDIT: I missed the question about whether the first one last year was a hibernator. It was. This was my first view of a butterfly in 2009 (it's down the bottom left-hand corner):
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