Padfield

[Padfield]

I had an irrational hunch chequered skippers would be on the wing today, even though I've never seen one before in April (typical emergence locally is the last week of May and my earliest record is 9th May, in 2009). So I took my camera with me to school in the afternoon and carried my bike up through the woods instead of cycling along the road. Bingo! A single, fresh male was cruising up and down a path by a little stream. Eventually, he settled briefly and I got this record shot before carrying on to work:



Guy

[Padfield]

I had some free time this morning so decided to take my first high trip of the year. Obviously, not very high, because it's still snowy in the mountain tops, but up to my most reliable local colony of violet copper, at a little over 1700m (5577.427822ft, for Jack ). My earliest previous sighting of this species was 28th April, in 2007, but that was at only 1300m. Again, a hunch told me that this year there was a good chance it would be flying already.

Almost as I arrived at the site a huge, black cloud brewed up over the sun and stayed there. Mountain butterflying can be like this. It was visibly sunny elsewhere, even as close as 1 km away, but my patch was shrouded. And it was cold!


(Just after I arrived)

Nevertheless, I could see vegetation conditions were perfect for violet copper - bistort has to be in leaf and aconite-leaved buttercup has to be in flower:



So I stuck around for an hour, during which time I saw a couple of little blues and quite a few green hairstreaks, which are remarkably tough little butterflies:



After an hour, sitting on a tussock reading the newspaper, I left and began cycling down the mountain. Suddenly, the clouds broke a little and I reckoned there were perhaps 15 minutes of sun in prospect. I raced back to the site, almost trashing my bike on the stony, mountain path, and reached it just in time to find a female violet copper. I took a record shot, then she zoomed off and clouds came back over.





It's a rubbish picture, but even there, you can see she has a full abdomen and I think she was looking for laying sites. Clearly, that implies the species has been on the wing for a few days now. She was probably jumped by a male as soon as she was born, but the males typically emerge up to a week before the females. She will lurk in the vegetation all day, waiting for a few minutes of sun to warm up in, after which she will continue laying eggs until it is too cold to continue. Then she'll wait for some more sun.

I had to come down the mountain then, as I do still have a job, but will revisit the spot soon to get better pictures of this charismatic butterfly.

Guy

[Rogerdodge]

Guy
You da man
Real

[Padfield]

Guy
You da man
Real

If anyone had seen me today they'd have thought I was a weirdo. Sitting alone on a grassy hillock in a mountain bog, dressed in collar and tie and clean trousers(I had come straight from school), under threatening skies.

Maybe there's a bit of weird in all of us.

Guy

[NickMorgan]

It's a rubbish picture, ...

I would be delighted if I had taken that picture!!

[Padfield]

Thanks Nick!

I intended to spend this morning watching and photographing mountain dappled whites, Euchloe simplonia, to try and get to know the species better. To that end, I cycled down to the valley, took the train along the valley, then cycled 15km back up into the hills to a mountain road where they fly every year. Just as the other day, a huge black cloud brewed up just as I got there and remained over the sun all morning. Plenty of blue sky around, just not in the same place as the sun!

This Apollo was quite torpid, spread out and waiting for the sun, just like me.





You can see all that blue in the wrong part of the sky.

As there was no sun, I searched the foodplant for eggs. I found just this one, hatched, but of course I can't be certain it is simplonia as other Pierids might well lay on the same foodplant.



So for the rest of the morning I cycled up and down the same stretch of hill, waiting and watching. A Camberwell beauty flew and various blues were lurking, waiting for the sun too. Higher up the hill a meadow was in the sun and I found a small colony of Osiris blues - my first record of that species for the location. Here are a female and a male:





Osiris blue is very like little blue, but bigger, and the male is, of course, bright blue on the upperside. Because mountain colonies of little blue can contain very large specimens it is always good to find a male Osiris to confirm the species. Association with the foodplant, sainfoin, is another good clue.

In the afternoon, the sun shone intermittently and simplonia flew! I was able to make a few observations about its behaviour, but the occasions were limited. Most interestingly, perhaps, I noted that when the sun went in most of the other species hung around, lurking in the undergrowth, waiting for the next bit of warmth, but simplonia invariably got up and motored off, either up or down a rocky gully that crossed the road. I had been hoping for good photo opportunities when the cloud came, but the species evacuated the area every time. For the same reason, it was always a few minutes after the sun returned that the first simplonia reappeared.

Photo opportunities were rare, but here are a few pictures:


(Nectaring at the foodplant)


(Probably the same male, about an hour later)


(Probably a different male, sheltering in a bush after being brushed by a car. This setting is not normal for the species)

Clouds kept brewing and stopping play so I cycled back down to the valley and went in search of Iolas blues. These didn't appear - one of the few things that doesn't seem to be early this year - but the trip was not in vain as I got my first spotted fritillary of 2011:



Here is a red-underwing skipper at the same site:



I cycled over 50km today and drank several litres of beer along the way. Then I had to go into school and tutor kids preparing for their IB exams until after 9.00pm. Tomorrow will be a day of rest.

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

Guy:

I cycled over 50km today and drank several litres of beer along the way. Then I had to go into school and tutor kids preparing for their IB exams until after 9.00pm. Tomorrow will be a day of rest.

I presume the reference to beer is in jest - or is it? Lucky students - they would have had some lively tutorials.

Jack

[Padfield]

]I presume the reference to beer is in jest - or is it? Lucky students - they would have had some lively tutorials.

OK - 2 litres, to be exact, paced out between 10.30am and 5.00pm, so probably under the drink-drive limit at all times. I would have been too tired to fly a plane, Jack, but not too tired to come in unpaid on my day off and sort out a few kids' maths problems! Very constructive it was too!

No exaggeration in the 50km, though...

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

Now there must be some psychologists out there or statisticians who can explain this one.

I always wake up during the night with a “need” (and yes Guy, we are allowed to flush our toilets in the middle of the night). I look at the bedside clock the moment I wake and it is invariably between 1 and 4 am, ie a 180 minute period. So statistically, assuming an even spread of waking times, any particular time number should come round every 180 days – call that six months. Yet at least once every month, I wake up to see the clock showing 3.14. It’s my pi moment.

I think Guy, you and I must be joint holders of the title on ukb of "greatest weirdo".

Jack

[Padfield]

I'm OK with that, Jack!

Having looked at the picture of a mature simplonia caterpillar in Lafranchis (the original, French book), I now think this young larva I found on the foodplant probably is simplonia (at the time I had my doubts, so I didn't post it):



That means the egg I showed above is also probably simplonia.

Guy

[Padfield]

We've had copious rain and thick fog for a couple of days, and IB exams have just started, so there have been few opportunities for lep delights.

On Sunday I did get out for a bit in the afternoon, to look for early stages. I was examining elm in particular, and although I didn't find any WLH larvae there was plenty of life on the leaves. Perhaps someone could identify this moth caterpillar for me:



I have no idea what these eggs are - not lep eggs, I presume:



I found two batches of them on different elm trees.

This evening I popped down to my local brown hairstreak 'colony'. It is not a colony at all, being a tiny clump of blackthorn in the middle of a cowfield and the only blackthorn I can find in at least a 5km radius - probably more. It cannot possibly sustain itself. Nevertheless, it seems at least one wandering female finds it each year and leaves a handful of eggs. I was able to find one larva tonight:





It was still tiny - no more than 4mm long - and difficult to photograph in the fading evening light (about 7.30pm). If the WLH cats are the same size it is hardly surprising I couldn't find any on the elm trees.

Before I got to the brown hairstreaks my eye caught a female sooty copper resting, wings akimbo, catching the last sunlight, at the top of a Gallium stem:



Guy

[ChrisC]

when i saw your caterpillar i thought it resembled the mainly oak feeding Amphipyra pyramidea but only resembled and as i don't know what species you get over there. but it could be a start. but could be completely wrong too.

Chris

[Padfield]

Thanks Chris - that looks a good match.

There are other species in the genus in Switzerland, and all are described as being polyphagous. The only one my books mention explicitly as feeding on elm is perflua, but that is rare. Pyramidea feeds on various trees and I suspect your initial identification was correct.

Guy

[Padfield]

The numbers are really building up now. I visited two of my favourite sites today with Matt Rowlings and we clocked up 47 species of butterfly, by any reckoning a fantastic count for 7th May.

New for the year were (for me) were Nickerl's fritillary (normally end of May), Oberthür's grizzled skipper, Northern brown argus, geranium argus and black-veined white.

Here are just a few photographic highlights:


Female Nickerl's fritillary (Mellicta aurelia)


Male Oberthür's grizzled skipper (Pyrgus armoricanus)


Another male armoricanus, showing the upperside, for those getting their eye in on the skippers!


Male black-veined white (Aporia crataegi)


Male small copper (Lycaena phlaeas)


Male olive skipper (Pyrgus serratulae). This is one of my favourite pictures. The books never reveal what a smart, yet subtle, creature this is. Quite distinctive amongst the Pyrgus skippers.


Male turquoise blue


Male northern brown argus (Aricia artaxerxes)


Male mallow skipper (Carcharodus alceae)

As usual, I could go on and on (I took 235 photos today), but I'll finish with some soft porn for Gibster:





Quite stupendous flowers - and a life tick for both Matt and me. There were a lot of them growing in a very small clearing. Matt is in the background of this shot:



A good day. Tomorrow I will head off alone and see if the Provençal fritillaries and Zephyr blues are flying. They shouldn't be, but I didn't expect to see Nickerl's fritillaries today, so anything is possible.

Guy

[Gibster]

Hehehe...appreciated!

[David M]

These are the times when I regret being a resident of the UK, i.e. never being able to guarantee a day spend butterfly hunting as a result of the unpredictable weather.

Good luck tomorrow, Guy.

[Jack Harrison]

Lovely pics Guy that convey the atmosphere superbly.

Jack

[Padfield]

Thanks Jack.

David, I think Swiss weather is no less predictable than British weather! Today was a case in point. When I checked http://www.meteosuisse.ch before setting off in the morning they said it would be hot and sunny all day, with only high, thin cloud. In reality, the day was dominated by cumulus, including cumulonimbus and rain at two points (so far)! Looking at satellite images from my iPhone I could see that the central and northern Alps were covered in fluffy white while all the surrounding areas of Europe were clear...

Anyway, it was an interesting day. Provençal fritillary and Zephyr blue are not on the wing yet, it would appear. But several new species for the year were flying, including (at various sites) knapweed fritillary, marbled skipper, woodland ringlet and probably pale clouded yellow.

At one site I met a couple of men with nets. The nets were bright yellow and green, so I guessed they weren't there for butterflies, but I asked them what they were doing anyway (very politely, of course - this was a public place, not a reserve). They were very happy to tell me they were butterfly watchers and openly showed me the contents of their nets: a dozen or more marbled fritillary caterpillars in each, together with some bramble leaves. I asked if they were doing research with some university, to which they replied no, they were simply going to rear them for themselves. I didn't pursue it any further, because marbled fritillaries are very common and they probably weren't doing anything illegal (I'll check). Nor did I ask if they had business relations with anyone near Finemere wood, mostly because their French wasn't very good and I don't know how to make jokes in German.

ANYWAY, after their passage I checked the bramble to see if they'd left any, and rapidly found this fine marbled fritillary caterpillar:



Here's a puzzle. Normally, when you see leaves or twigs going walkabout, there's a heroic ant lugging them along with its teeth. I often watch ants with admiration. But today I saw a small cluster of leaves and twigs looping across the path and when I looked it turned out the whole thing was a caterpillar:



I assumed the leaves had got stuck to it, but when I examined it it really did seem they were growths out of its body. A parasite? A fungus? Or some remarkable camouflage? When I touched it, to see if the leaves would dislodge, it immediately rolled up into a ball:



I've never seen anything like it. Does anyone know if this is an unfortunate, diseased creature or a wonder of camouflage (or possibly, both, if some parasite uses this as camouflage)? Or might the leaves and twigs really have been stuck to it?

I let it continue looping its way to the edge of the path.

Here are a few piccies from the rest of the day:


This is my first marbled skipper (Carcharodus lavatherae) of the year. She is a real beauty and was pursued for a full ten minutes by a mallow skipper after I first saw her (he might have been chasing her for long before that). Every time she landed, he would immediately land a little lower down the flower and creep up to take her from behind, at which provocation she always flew off. It looked as though she would never settle long enough for a picture. But eventually he got the message and she was then easy to photograph, being in need of a rest!


This piccie shows a Glanville fritillary beside a dusty road.

I've been spending some time recently trying to photograph blues with their natural colours, by adjusting the exposure. In the field, the shade of blue is often a crucial key to the identity and many photographs get it quite wrong. Today I practised on Adonis blues. Here is what comes closest (on my computer monitor anyway) to the true colour of Adonis blue:



Here's a record shot of my second Erebia species of the year, the woodland ringlet (Erebia medusa):



In a couple of months I'll be seeing a dozen species of ringlet every time I go out...

I saw a couple of Dukes tussling in the late afternoon sun on my way home and assumed it was territorial. One landed conspicuously on dogwood and when I watched him more closely it turned out he was actually taking nutrients rather than just showing off his colours:





Nearby, a chequered skipper was holding the fort conspicuously on a head of salad burnet:





When I left the site, at about 6.00pm, one of the Dukes was doing the same thing in a little patch of sainfoin:



Guy

EDIT - if anyone is having difficulties loading my photos, I think it is overload on my server. Shortly after making a new post to UK Butterflies, I always find it impossible to access my own website. I'll take it up with the hosts - it should be possible for half a dozen people to access a handful of my photos at once without the thing slowing to a dribble.

[Paul]

Fantastic... I think that would be a healthy Geometrid catty Guy... nearest in UK... see write up on http://ukmoths.org.uk/show.php?id=3429 not that it would be that particular type

[Padfield]

Thanks Paul - very interesting. You notice I described it as 'looping'!! I had no idea they did that - it just shows how unobservant I am. But what remarkable behaviour. All the bits attached are broadly the same colour, and the same colour as the caterpillar, which ends up being fantastically camouflaged, if a little encumbered!!

Much relieved!

Guy