Confirmation of identity - a week in Provence

[Part timer]

Hi

I'd be grateful for opinions on these 3. All were taken between Sept 10th and 14th this year in the Luberon area of Provence.

The first I'm pretty sure is Baton Blue. I did vacillate over Chequered, but the timing looks wrong. It was tiny, certainly no larger than a Small Blue and was buzzing around at the front of a house in the village of Oppede-le-vieux.

The 2nd is the most tricky. My current vote is Oberthur's Grizzled Skipper, except that the Collins guide indicates that this species flies only up to late August. Safflower Skipper was another I considered on the grounds that it flies later, but I'm not convinced.

The 2nd ticks all the boxes for Striped Grayling, although once again the good book suggests that this is done and dusted by August. I suppose 2nd week in Sep isn't stretching a point too much. They were reasonably common and widespread in the area, so have I overlooked a possible alternative?

Any thoughts welcome.

[Padfield]

Hi Part Timer!

The first one is almost certainly a baton blue.To be honest, I can't make out much detail on your picture, because it's very compressed, but if the butterfly was tiny, and given what I can see of it, baton is the most likely. Chequered blues are significantly bigger and have very visible orange, which I think we would see even in your picture.

The second is sage skipper.

And yes, the third is a striped grayling. Like many graylings, this one hangs on well into the autumn.

Hope this helps,

Guy

[Roger Gibbons]

Chequered Blue flies in April-May (early June) in Provence with a putative second brood in the summer, which I have been able to confirm with a July sighting, but this is about as late as it gets.

Well done with the Sage Skipper. According to the PACA Atlas (mentioned previously on this forum) there are no recorded sightings in Vaucluse, although the Lafranchis book does show it as having been seen there. This species continues to elude me and is one of the 21 French mainland species I haven’t seen (219 seen out of 240), with 187 species seen this year. It is distinctly hard to find in France.

Striped Grayling, as Guy says, flies well into the autumn – I saw one two days ago in Var. The flight periods given in Collins are not entirely reliable, the Lafranchis book being much more accurate for France.

[Part timer]

Thanks to both. I'm interested in the Sage Skipper diagnosis. What is it about the photograph that makes you so sure of the identification?

A few more details on location - it was on the GR97 path approx due north of the village of Merindol at the intersection of a couple of tracks in a beautiful area. We'd walked up the GR6 from the village because we'd read that it was a good area for birds, although all we saw was a pair of Black Redstarts.

This skipper was flitting around some pink flowers in the company of a Wall Brown and a Long-tailed Blue. Didn't notice any sage around although there was a lot of rosemary and thyme.

[Padfield]

I'm interested in the Sage Skipper diagnosis. What is it about the photograph that makes you so sure of the identification?

If you look at the row of pd spots on the forewing you will notice that two spots (the ones just below the three joined spots near the costa) are missing. Those two spots are present but displaced outwards in Pyrgus species. That is one concrete clue. But apart from this, the sage skipper simply has a very characteristic appearance that can't be confused with Pyrgus when you know this group well. Both Roger and I have spent so many man-hours staring at Pyrgus and related species that our brains now have grizzled skipper shaped filters through which we see everything!

On the underside hindwing, a useful thing to know is that sage skippers (like all Muschampia) lack a spot at the base of s.1.

Guy

EDIT: This is a safflower skipper:

[Roger Gibbons]

The pink flowers may well have been Phlomis herba-venti.

[Part timer]

OK, thanks for the tips on identification.

I've got another couple of skipper photographs I've taken in the last 2 or 3 years of which I'm not certain of. I'll dig them out in the next few days and seek your opinions on them.