Padfield

[Paul Wetton]

Decent camera on that phone. Looking forward to seeing your other photos when you get back though.

Are you heading back to switzerland after your stint in the mountains or moving on elsewhere.

Have a good day.

[Padfield]

iPhones are great, Paul!

The weather treated me today and I was able to go up high. It was a toss-up between lefevrei/sthennyo at one site or gorgone at another. I opted for gorgone, which was the right choice. I had excellent weather for photographing males and females, as well as plenty of other Erebia, including rondui, oeme, manto constans, epiphron and meolans. Here's what the iPhone made of rondui:



I could see that the peaks where lefevrei and sthennyo fly were shrouded in cloud all day.

Lots more besides, including my first small pearl-bordered frits of the year, in an upland meadow at 2200m!

A couple more pics from today - my last post probably until I get back to CH tomorrow.




(Aran horses in Erebialand...)

Tonight in a hostal, then on the 5.00am to Barcelona (where with a little luck I'll get my last trip-tick, geranium bronze), then fly to Geneva and I should be in my own bed tomorrow night.

Guy

[Padfield]

It's going to take me a long time to process all my pictures, so I'll post them in selections, in the overseas section. I've stuck some Agrodiaetus blues up already and will do some more tonight.

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=5553

These are those brassy ringlets again from my last day:



Guy

[Paul Wetton]

Good looking piece of poo ya found there and the Ringlets aren't bad.

[Padfield]

I risk getting a bit out of synch here, as I haven't finished going through my Spanish pictures yet. But the sun shone in Switzerland today (after two weeks of gloom and rain, apparently) and I couldn't resist popping into my nearest short-tailed blue colony to see how they were doing.

On the way, I called in for half an hour at my local woods. It didn't take long to locate a purple emperor egg:



And soon afterwards I found another, in a different batch of sallow:



Both were above head height and I noticed that the second was easily visible from beneath - perhaps a way of looking for them...



They are actually very conspicuous anyway, as this contextual picture shows:



White-letter hairstreaks were still about in the woods, but looking well past their best:



As I left the woods I found the potential mother-to-be of those eggs, who first landed some distance from me and then allowed quite close approach:





She was in quite good nick, considering it is August.

Further on, at the STB site, I was delighted to find really good numbers of this lovely (and quite rare in Switzerland) butterfly. Here is a female:



And here is a different female ovipositing on bird's foot trefoil:



The males were nectaring right down among the herbiage and the only way to get good photos would have involved crushing much vegetation. So I resigned myself to no great shots and sat on a rock in the sun to watch the peaceful scene and drink a beer or two. I have become almost obsessively intolerant of leaving any evidence of having been there when I photograph butterflies and in some environments - like meadows with low-growing vetches - this means just sitting it out. Very enjoyable all the same!

Guy

[Gibster]

Hello Guy,

thanks for posting those Purple Emperor egg shots, I've never seriously thought they would be "findable" in the wild, but your pics give the impression that it could be relatively easy. Although, to be fair, your local sallows are in a far more pristine condition than those near me. Mine are riddled with Stigmella mines, mite-induced gall swellings, brown patches and so generally full of feeding holes that I doubt I'd be successful given ten hours searching, nevermind half an hour!!!

Loving your diary,

Gibster.

EDIT - My local sallows are also full of Harlequin Ladybird pupa (which is by far the most frequently encountered ladybird on my local patch). Would these see Purple Emperor eggs as fair game???

[Padfield]

Hi Gibster,

I think most PE eggs are laid rather higher up, but those that are laid lower down are certainly easy to spot, if your eye passes the right leaf.

We have manky sallow in CH too, but the females seem quite fussy about where they lay. If my limited experience is right (Kipper is the expert on these forums, I think, for PE) they choose healthy bunches of leaves (bunches, so the caterpillar can move to a new leaf easily) in shady parts of the trees, but towards the outer edge rather than right in the middle. There's no point in looking on branches on exposed sunny sides of bushes. I'm told there's also no point in searching branches with flower buds - only those with leaf buds. This is obvious in winter and spring when you look for caterpillars but the females seem to know about it in summer too. They want their babies to be born into leafy suburbs, not hives of nectaring activity.

As I say, Kipper has much more experience with wild PE stages than I do (oh - and Cotswold Cockney is a bit of a worldwide Apatura expert too).

Guy

[Gibster]

That's a very well put answer, Guy. Informative to the max!!! Thanks for the tips, maybe I'll finally strike lucky soon? The whole leaf bud versus flower bud laden twig info is entirely new to me. Later this week I get two consecutive days off work. I may well launch myself deep into the healthiest sallow thickets on Epsom Common, a good site for Purple Emperors (and just 5 minutes walk away) with loads of part-shaded caprea.

Cheers again,

Gibster.

[Padfield]

My book on butterfly hunting in winter says that because of the need for leafy branches, without catkins, young sallows are generally preferred. Mature, high trees produce more blossoming branches and although early stages may be found on them it is more effective to look on younger, smaller bushes. I quote:

'The majority of caterpillars can be found on young, sometimes only 3-5 year old , Goat Willow bushes whose lower branches can comfortably be reached from the ground. The ideal willow bush is generally no higher than 5-7 meters [sic]'. (Tagfalter suchen im Winter, by Gabriel Hermann - a bilingual book, so you don't need to read German).

I didn't notice whether the difference between blossom buds and leaf buds was evident today - or even whether the buds are formed - because I had very little time and looked on bushes I already knew were appropriate. But in winter it is easy to distinguish the two.

Guy

[Padfield]

After a morning working, I went up the local mountain in the afternoon to look for Erebia pronoe - water ringlet. On 27th July last year I took Roger Gibbons to the same site and we saw none, but today I saw probably a dozen in a couple of hours. They were incredibly hard to photograph, being incessantly on the move. When they landed on the ground they walked around. When they nectared (and I only saw one nectaring) they constantly fidgeted and wandered over the flower head.

There were plenty of other Erebia at the site, and all the others were amenable and friendly. In fact, I had one or two Scotch arguses sitting on me most of the time, even when I was walking, and they were constantly on my backpack too:


(Scotch argus)


(Scotch argus)

Manto ringlets were easy too. Here is a female, form bubastis (white spots instead of yellow) nectaring:



And this female was quite happy to do her private business in public:



Here is the egg she laid:



This is a common brassy ringlet, Erebia cassioides:



This was a tricky one to identify. I think it's a Piedmont ringlet, form valesiaca:



You notice it fell for the classic 'my mud's better than your mud' trick, which works for most Erebia, but not pronoe. Once attracted, most species stick to you:



Eventually, one rather tatty pronoe decided to nectar, but it was impossible for me to get a decent photo because it moved constantly. I think this is the best I did:



This shows the colour better:



This rather awful video shows the restlessness of the species. All its congeners would sit down and just nectar or take minerals - this species had to be constantly moving:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csUCdkvH23g[/video]

After a couple of hours I decided to go home, and just at that moment one or possibly two pronoe suddenly became a little more amenable and I was able to get a very few slightly better shots of this fascinating Erebia. In my part of Switzerland it is almost completly black above, with two very small eyespots on the forewing discreetly circled in red. In flight it looks large and very black. It is a late species and I think I only saw males today, so maybe a return trip is warranted in a week or two's time.





Guy

[Paul Wetton]

Great stuff Guy.

Great vantage point for the Scotch Argus.

Watchout though they're after the beer.

[David M]

That last Ringlet is amazing. Looks like it's been showered in ash.

[Padfield]

Even if they found the beer they'd never have managed to open it, Paul.

I agree David - a very sooty butterfly. That might perhaps explain their restlessness - they're so black they warm up almost instantly and don't need to bask while they nectar. Elsewhere they are quite different - more like Scotch argus. It would be interesting to know if their behaviour is the same (I've only ever seen the Swiss form).

Guy

[NickB]

Love the "frustrated photographer" video of pronoe ....!
I can imagine just how difficult it is; if they don't even need to bask, you can't even catch them cold like other species when they wake up...
I'm sure your usual persistence will reap its reward...
Keep them coming; looks like there is still a lot to see...
N

[Padfield]

Yes, I'll go back earlier one day and try and catch them warming up, Nick. They won't be at the same place, of course, because that's a puddling/nectaring site, not a roosting site, but I have an intuition about where they really come from. I saw no females on the track but I did see the males regularly drifting off down the slope to another, less accessible site, where they might mate and roost &c.

When I find myself getting frustrated at failing to get a picture, I always follow the same routine: 1) Smile 2) Breathe deeply in and sigh out with a contented 'Ahhh!' 3) Look around and reflect on how lucky I am to be in such a peaceful place surrounded by butterflies 4) Recall that if I got everything I wanted today there'd be no point in tomorrow.

That always does the trick!!

Guy

[Padfield]

I've been very busy recently, and getting behind on everything, but I had to nip out for an hour yesterday (in the rain) to see if the purple emperor eggs had hatched. They both had, though I couldn't find any larvae. I didn't search very thoroughly because at this stage the larvae are minuscule and very vulnerable and I didn't want to risk brushing any off the bushes by getting in there and searching.

Last year I found one larva at this stage, whom I called Hadrian. Although absolutely newly hatched, with a head the size of the rest of his body put together, he already knew he was supposed to sit in the little dip in the end of the leaf, just like his big brothers and sisters:





So that is the place to look!

I did find a new egg yesterday, though:



I hope finding three eggs without too much searching means this has been a good year for the species.

There was a forest bug sitting in the same sallow bush as the eggs, so I moved him gently to a different tree. A forest bug wouldn't get much nutrition out of a 1st instar PE larva, but I don't get much nutrition from wild strawberries and I still eat them.

Guy

[NickB]

Nice to see the little dears. I just hope that they do indeed fare better than Diocletian et al. RIP - I remember the shield-bug.....
If you do track them this year, I think the secret may be to give them numbers.
Names make things much more personal and LOTSW could sense your emotional attachment when we visited...
I look forward to following their progress nevertheless...
N

[Padfield]

... I think the secret may be to give them numbers...

I'm sure you're right, Nick, but I have a feeling I'll probably ignore this advice.

I'm hoping to find some wintering caterpillars this time, that I can follow right through - last year I didn't find the first one, Nero, until May. Expect more emotion.

Guy

[NickB]

... I think the secret may be to give them numbers...

I'm sure you're right, Nick, but I have a feeling I'll probably ignore this advice.
Guy

...most people do...

Perhaps you could select Emperors that met particularly grisly ends...?

[Padfield]

I'm still finding too few hours in the day to keep up with the butterfly year - I haven't updated my own website since 24th July - but the last few days have been too hot to spend the whole time inside working.

On Tuesday I had a quick hunt for brown hairstreaks in the valley, without any success. Normally, September is the month for this species but I had hoped to find a few males nectaring, especially when I discovered some extensive patches of hemp agrimony. No luck. Instead, I saw more purple hairstreaks than I have ever seen in a single day. They were everywhere, taking minerals on bare ground, flitting across roads, sitting by the dozen in oak trees and nectaring on any available flowers. Many of them were still in perfectly good nick:



Besides these, there is a bit of a lull at the moment in the valley. The autumn butterflies and third brooders are not really out yet and the summer brooders are in decline.

Today I had to go to the local part of the valley for provisions (leaving for the UK tomorrow) so I called in at a site where I have had a hat-trick of tails in the last few years (long-tailed blue, short-tailed blue and Provençal short-tailed blue). The long-tailed blues haven't arrived there yet but short-tailed and Provençal short-tailed were both out in reasonable numbers:


(Short-tailed)


(Provençal short-tailed)

When I get back from the UK we will be into the final act...

Guy