More hermits.
Nine days ago I visited the Jura to see my first ever hermits. It was the very beginning of the season, apparently, and only males were flying, so this morning I was up at 05h00 again to look for some females. As I had hoped, there were plenty. The female is noticeably larger than the male and quite different beneath but her behaviour is the same - sitting around or nectaring with the wings firmly clasped together above the back! Here are a few:
And a few males, also from today:
When I photographed this next one I thought it was a female, from its size and paleness in flight. But it has largely the same markings beneath as a male, albeit much paler and less striking than a normal male:
I suspect it is a well marked female rather than a very pale male.
I had particularly hoped to see male-female interactions, as this is when most graylings show upperside views. Hermits are rather special. The first time I saw a male give chase to a female she brushed him off and he accepted this without any resistance. Next, I saw a male who clearly had intent land some way from a female and start moving towards her:
When he got there he walked around to the front and met her face on:
She was OK with this but something flushed them (I was taking all photos from a distance, so as not to flush them myself) and he had to start again:
Having acknowledged him, she then moved off to nectar, while he stood loyally nearby, watching, guarding and obviously feeling pretty proud of his new girlfriend:
Finally, they settled down in a near lovers' clinch (not quite in contact) and sat gazing into each other's eyes for a little over 2 hours and 15 minutes.
I know how long they were like that for because I kept checking back to see if anything more interesting was about to happen and it never was. It reminded me of the occasional Viz strip, 'Planet Bore', in which rather badly drawn things from another planet sit around doing absolutely nothing. When I came back on my 2 hours and 30 minutes check they had gone and were nowhere to be found.
So no upperside shots. To make sure I had something on my website to illustrate the colour scheme I took a video and extracted this frame - a bit lame but it will serve the basic purpose:
I didn't take many photos of other species. Here is the hermit's giant cousin, a great banded grayling:
For once, the Swiss trains didn't run smoothly on the way home, apparently due to 'un accident de personne' on the line in Montreux. This is often a euphemism for a suicide and one of the conductors suggested there had been one. Whatever actually happened, the result was the cancellation of all trains from Vevey onwards for the rest of the day, and thus a late return home for me. As we were stuck outside Vevey, I saw a family of goosanders on the lake and got this shot through the train window:
Guy
