Blink and you will miss this season. Records are tumbling, with earliest sightings of several species today, including chequered blue, de Prunner's ringlet and rosy grizzled skipper. Conditions have been perfect recently, with warm sun and just enough rain to keep the grass green.
Here are a few highlights from a day in the Rhône Valley.
Just like many of you in the UK, I was finding green hairstreaks at every turn. Where in previous years I might have seen a single male defending his patch, today there were often several, tumbling together in the air and sometimes settling for territories quite close together.
Dingy skippers don't deserve their common name - they are quite beautiful insects (though equally as aggressive and territorial as green hairstreaks):
I think my favourite butterfly of the day was chequered blue. These are very smart butterflies, especially when fresh, and have a habit of settling in most picturesque places. This one chose a delicate forget-me-not:
Further along the Rhône Valley, the chequered blue's diminutive cousin, the baton blue, was quite common, often taking minerals on unsurfaced tracks:
Here is a Provençal short-tailed blue buried deep in a lucerne field. Last year the first of these flew on 24th April.
The first
Erebia species to fly in Switzerland is always
triaria (de Prunner's ringlet). Typically, I find my first one (i.e., one) around mid-April. Today they were locally common and some had obviously been on the wing a while. Although this isn't a good picture, here's a record of this interesting butterfly:
Here is a tiny Chapman's blue in a patch of delicate crucifers - this is why I don't lie down on the ground to get pictures:
I could go on! Altogether, I saw 32 species at a couple of sites today. The weather will continue like this into the beginning of next week and then rain is expected - just what we need to prevent the lush foodplants desiccating. So far it is a spring designed for butterflies!
Guy