A few recent photos from Provence:
A pair of Green-underside Blues (Glaucopsyche alexis), the female immaculate as usual.
A male Purple-shot Copper (Lycaena alciphron). It was highly territorial, chasing off anything that came near it. The fact that it always returned to sit on this geranium did not occur to it that this might appear just a teeny bit girly.
A male Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas) obviously more concerned with the vantage point than whether the plant was scratching its feet.
A male Knapweed Fritillary (Melitaea phoebe) perching on a daisy in overcast conditions.
A very strange customer, not at all common in France, a Clouded Apollo (Parnassius mnemosyne).
The iconic butterfly of the Alpes, an Apollo (Parnassius apollo), apparently very fresh and sitting placidly by the roadside. It did not appear to be damaged and may have been just emerged. Getting squashed on mountain roads is a major threat to this species in particular, and we moved it to a rather less dangerous location.
The underside of the above.
There are three species of Gatekeeper in France (and I am not sure if there are any others in mainland Europe), the familiar Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus), its southern cousin the Southern Gatekeeper (Pyronia cecilia) and, in my opinion, the star of the show the Spanish Gatekeeper (Pyronia bathseba) which is principally an Iberian species with a distribution ‘leaking’ into the far south of France.