After such a long period of cold weather, my local mountain patch is really very sad. Almost nothing was on the wing in hot sun in my local woods yesterday - just a marbled fritillary and a large skipper seen after about half an hour's wandering. A few more things were around the track leading into the woods, but the cold has taken its toll on the spring butterflies and the summer ones aren't on the wing there yet.
I'm happy to say it was a different story in Valais today. I took my bike on the train along the valley and then cycled up to about 1000m, exploring some new places and finding 54 species of butterfly along the way (and I didn't see meadow brown or small heath!!). Here are a few of my favourite pictures from the day, compressed down to 600px max dimension or 500px (my usual web size).
This was my favourite find of the day - a Niobe fritillary, form eris. I've not seen this form close-up in Switzerland before and it was interestingly different from the eris I see regularly in the Pyrenees (much more strongly marked, especially in the submarginal area).
High brown fritillaries were flying at the same site.
Provençal fritillaries, subspecies berisalii, were numerous at 1000m+, and fresh, though at valley level they were looking older. This one was keeping out of the sun along a mountain track. This Swiss subspecies is easy to identify because of the prominent dark crescents in the submarginal lunules.
Also at altitude, great sooty satyrs are suddenly common. In the heat of the afternoon they mostly hide away in the shade, but this one nipped out for a quick drink before going straight back to his rocky wall.
Ilex hairstreaks are now locally common...
... as are marbled skippers.
This is another Swiss speciality, the lesser woodland grayling (H. genava). I chased this one off the road because I'm tired of seeing this and woodland graylings getting hit by cars!
There were some very fresh holly blues flying...
...and you could hardly move for Apollos!
This fox watched me for some time while I was photographing great sooty satyrs...
... then got bored and slunk off.
All in all, there should be plenty around when the UK Butterflies contingent arrives, providing only that the sun shines for them!
Guy
Especially your niobe...
