Silver washed or dark green fritillary?

Henry.Kemm · Post by **Henry.Kemm** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 8:02 am

I took this on a path at Old Winchester Hill in Hampshire yesterday. The habitat is mainly grass, but there is a reasonable amount of woodland as well. It looks almost exactly like a picture on the website by Peter Eeles of a silver washed raised in captivity, but otherwise I am at a loss.
My main difficulty is that the splodges on mine do not extend to the wing segment lines as in the other pictures on the website in both Silver-washed and Dark-Green categories.
Many thanks,

Post by **Pete Eeles** » Thu Jun 14, 2007 8:30 am

Holy moley! Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is a Queen of Spain Fritillary - one of the rarest migrants to the UK! Can someone else please confirm and we'll get the sighting into the Hampshire records!

Cheers,

- Pete

Post by **Padfield** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:23 am

100% Queen of Spain!!

Brilliant!

Guy

Henry.Kemm · Post by **Henry.Kemm** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:38 am

It never occurred to me to look at the rarer ones, but when I do, my book agrees absolutely with your diagnosis. Many thanks.

Tymo · Post by **Tymo** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 9:21 pm

It seems to be a good year for I. lathonia, because here in the Netherlands it always have been a coast species, this year there are also a lot of records inwards.

Henry.Kemm · Post by **Henry.Kemm** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:48 pm

I have consulted a couple of experts, and it turns out that although I took threee series of pictures in different places at different times over about 80 minutes, they were not three different butterflies, but all the same one.

They therefore considered that it was a migrant from the continent. However it not unknown for there to be more than one, and if they mate, the resulting adults (if any) would appear in the early autumn.

The picture attached to the original post was from the second series. This is from the first.

Post by **Padfield** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 5:44 pm

Just for the record, I did wonder if this would be a good year for lathonia back in February:

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/phpBB2/v ... .php?t=874

Certainly, it has continued to be exceptional for this species here in Switzerland. They were flying in the Rhône Valley as early as January and recently I have been seeing them daily at altitude too.

Guy

Cotswold Cockney · Post by **Cotswold Cockney** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 9:11 pm

Nice one!

There have been a few such observations lately .... I wonder if this species can over winter here under favourable conditions in southern England.