Padfield

[Padfield]

As mentioned in my previous post, the valley near me was bathed in heavy cloud this morning:


(unfortunately, I forgot to change the ISO for that picture, after using a high value for the comet earlier in the day)

This is the station at Aigle, buried beneath the stratus:



It hardly looks like a butterfly day! But 15 minutes away, at Martigny, the valley was clear. This is the road to the vineyards - so cold that my bicycle brakes were frozen solid before I reached the end of this track and I had to jump off to stop moving:



I reached yesterday's hotspot at 11h00 and immediately saw a male (I think - I'm not 100% sure) Queen of Spain fritillary. He was restless, because of a cold breeze that was rising, and though I got closer than yesterday he disappeared over the edge into the vineyard within seconds. Ten minutes later, 'he' returned and again stayed for a few seconds only. But when I looked at my photos, I saw they were of two different individuals (the second one is definitely a male):





This is the context - a sunny, but very exposed bank. They both tumbled off to the right, into the vines:



EDIT: I now think the first one is a female, so it's quite possible there's a very good reason why I never saw either of them again!

I tried elsewhere after about half an hour, as the wind was getting up, but found no more Queens. Even so, if I found two so quickly, I'm sure there were more on the wing, and possibly some females. This is quite a significant observation for 17th December!

At least two red admirals were parading in the same area:



View over Martigny:



And a final view from the tram back up to Villars:



Guy

[Chris Jackson]

Hi Guy,
Its very interesting to see your landscape photos which give a good idea of the terrain and the wintery conditions that Swiss butterflies try to survive in - they are much more couragous than their Mediterrannean cousins down here that go into hiding as soon the temperature drops below 14°C.
Chris

[Padfield]

Thanks Chris. It's not only the butterflies that are courageous. I went to a local quarry to look for hairstreak eggs today and was most impressed to see this young girl spending New Year's Day climbing a vertical rock wal!





As you can see, there's not much ice and snow around here at the moment!

I found some brown hairstreak eggs on the few, scattered blackthorn bushes in the quarry but despite warm sun no butterflies flew:



Happy New Year to all!

Guy

[Padfield]

Gloomy and drizzly here, so I decided to pop back to the Papiliorama and get some more species for my butterfly-house ID page. Unfortunately, the place was humming with people - I will never go in the school holidays again! - but despite that I did pick up a few new species, so the guide now covers 63 butterflies (I think).

This very striking butterfly is Catonephele numilia, from South America:



And this is Dryadula phaetusa, also from South America but reaching as far north as Texas:



A third new species, that I saw only very briefly, and from a distance, was Neptis hylas, a butterfly I saw equally briefly the last time I was in India, near some ancient Buddhist caves:



A fourth was a beautiful, green swallowtail species, but the throngs prevented me reaching it!

There will be an explosion of Morpho peleides in the Papiliorama in a few weeks' time:





Sadly, these eggs (Papilio polytes) have less future:



It was heartbreaking to see the females laying on almost anything, including visitors, but apparently not finding a suitable foodplant.

There were several fresh oleander hawkmoths:



This is a very fresh malachite butterfly, Siproeta stelenes:



And I was pleased to photograph this female Hypolimnas bolina, mimicking one of the crows (Euploea sp.):



Hypolimnas is an amazing group. The females accurately mimic various Danaids, and look so different from each other you would never guess they belong in the same genus. This next picture, of the very closely related Hypolimnas misippus, which mimics the plain tiger, Danaus chrysippus, was taken in Mumbai in 2012. Just amazing!



This male Papilio polytes, perhaps the father of the eggs shown above, actually posed for a photo - the first time I have ever seen a male of this species stop, I think, in the wild or in a butterly house!



Finally, this is Consul fabius, from South America, looking like a hall-of-mirrors version of a plain tiger! This is the first time I have seen the upperside of this butterfly properly:



My butterfly house ID guide is here: http://www.guypadfield.com/butterflyhouse.html. It might be provide some useful pointers for those visiting similar places this winter.

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

Really enjoyed your guide.

The camouflage of Kallima inachus Orange oakleaf is quite incredible.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a butterfly house in Britain (including Wisley) that begins to rival your Papilorama. The ones I have visited here have a much smaller (and less interesting) range of species.

Jack

[NickMorgan]

Really enjoyed your guide.

The camouflage of Kallima inachus Orange oakleaf is quite incredible.

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a butterfly house in Britain (including Wisley) that begins to rival your Papilorama. The ones I have visited here have a much smaller (and less interesting) range of species.
Jack

I agree entirely! Your web page is building into a great resource.
Papilorama must be a lot bigger than the butterfly houses over here. I guess that these places must get their stock from the same suppliers, as they often have the same range of butterflies (albeit less variety over here). I often speculate why there are never any lycaenidae. There are so many amazing species, particularly in SE Asia, and many of them should be easy enough to breed. I wonder if it is because the general public aren't fond of small insects buzzing around them and they prefer to see more spectacular species. It would be fun to introduce some pygmy grass blues to breed on the lantana!!
Amazing to see you finding Queen of Spain Frits and Red Admirals in December. When will you be posting about your first species for 2014?

[Padfield]

Thank you for the comments, Jack and Nick.

I probably give a slightly false impression of how much there is at the Papiliorama as I have visited quite a few times now, over some months (a year pass for all Swiss public transport costs less than £3000, which I understand from recent discussions in the British press is much less than many single-route commuter season tickets in the UK!). Put together on one page, I suspect the sum of the parts ends up looking rather bigger than the whole! But it is well run and off-peak is a pleasure to walk around. I, too, would enjoy seeing some Lycaenids. I wonder if their ecological requirements are more sophisticated - including ants, of course, in many cases - so it wouldn't work. There is also the fact they tend to gather on moist paths and I think there would be a lot of small butterflies crushed underfoot if things were not very carefully managed ...

It's difficult to say what's going to happen to the weather here, Nick. The very cold winter most people forecast has not really happened yet, though it might, and it's anyone's guess whether a few species will make it out in January. I'll keep you posted if they do!

Guy

[MikeOxon]

I look forward to trying your guide when the Wisley butterfly event starts on the 18th.

Whilst on your website, I wandered to the 'random' pages (fascinating stuff) and, as it's a dull, wet day here, tried your AICE quiz. I felt very chuffed to be on 75% after 25 question but am afraid I was, by then, suffering from brain-fade! It's funny how some things come back instantly, whereas others are long forgotten

Mike

[Padfield]

Glad you enjoyed the maths quiz, Mike! Even though I don't teach AICE any more (I don't think it even exists) I still find that useful for a bit of fun revision for some IB courses, and for the IGCSE Additional Maths.

Sorry my artificial intelligence butterfly chatterbox doesn't work any more. I spent quite a lot of time teaching him stuff but at some stage he disappeared and I can't remember any of my credentials for signing up again without paying. There was also a bug, whereby if you asked him one very precise (and vulgar) question, he replied with a barrage of foul invective quite unsuitable for a children's butterfly site. I learnt this one day when a naughty student provoked him with this particular question, just to see what would happen, and before long everyone in the room was logged on and gaping in amazement at his disgusting response. Probably a disgruntled coder had slipped this one in - and maybe the service was withdrawn when they found out!

Guy

[Padfield]

I worked in the morning, but it was so warm outside, and has been so mild for the last few days, I felt sure red admirals would be flying in the local part of the valley. Although it got much colder as I descended the hill, because of the usual winter temperature inversion, and despite a chilly breeze, I was just in time to find two red admirals. This one was the more obliging:



Although it was really too late, it was still so lovely I thought it was worth going a little further and trying for Queens of Spain. If I found them, I could work all day tomorrow instead of feeling an obligation to go out butterflying! I arrived at the vineyards at about 13h50 and zoomed around my usual circuit, seeing just one further red admiral before finding a nectaring Queen on my way back to the bike, at about 14h40:



If you know where to go, it is much easier to find this species in the mornings, when the males warm up and defend territories at the same old hotspots. By the afternoons they have dispersed to scattered nectaring sites, so I was lucky to find this one.

Shortly after that, the sun sank below the clouds cresting the mountains and everything went cold again:



A few lizards were lurking in the walls, flies were buzzing about and this bee species had also woken from hibernation:



The warm spell is set to last at least until Friday, when I might go out and see if anything else is on the wing.

Guy

[Chris Jackson]

I'm glad to see your 2014 season has started. Let's hope it continues at this rate.
Chris

[Matsukaze]

The bee looks like Xylocopa violacea - was it the size of a large bumblebee?

[Padfield]

The bee looks like Xylocopa violacea - was it the size of a large bumblebee?

Yes, it was - and that is certainly the species I usually see after hibernation. I wasn't quite sure, in this case, because of what looks like a buff patch on the wing and the paler thorax, but maybe the light was playing tricks.

Thank you for the confirmation - I'll assue it was this!

Guy

[Matsukaze]

They are obsessed with wisteria flowers, which they are constantly buzzing around. In the house we stay at in Provence, they fly right up to the open kitchen window, disregarding whether anyone is nearby. We looked at moving to the Isle of Wight a few years back, and I had plans to festoon the south-facing side of the house with the plant in the hope that I might lure some across the Channel.

[David M]

If you know where to go, it is much easier to find this species in the mornings, when the males warm up and defend territories at the same old hotspots. By the afternoons they have dispersed to scattered nectaring sites, so I was lucky to find this one.

Guy, I hope you'll forgive my intrusion, but I'm struggling to reconcile how a butterfly in Europe can disperse to a "nectaring site" in early January!!

Which plants are providing a source of nectar? Here in the UK, there are daisies and a few withered remnants of late flowering species (and not much else).

[Padfield]

Which plants are providing a source of nectar? Here in the UK, there are daisies and a few withered remnants of late flowering species (and not much else).

Mostly speedwell at this time of year, David. This is a detail from one of my 'approach' pictures of today's Queen (I take shots as I approach, in case the butterfly flies):



Mats of speedwells start appearing as soon as the snow melts, in scattered patches throughout the vineyards. I passed dozens of such patches today - it's just a matter of chance if you happen to come across one of the few butterflies around on them. But territorial lek areas are more predictable.

The red admiral was photographed in a village, on decorative flowers planted in a wall.

Luring bees across the channel, Matsukaze? Good luck with that!

Guy

[Matsukaze]

Like the Long-tailed Blue, Xylocopa turns up here sometimes as a migrant, sometimes as a stowaway. It is far-fetched but not completely beyond the bounds of possibility.

[Padfield]

A quick lunchtime circuit in the vineyards produced Queen of Spain fritillaries in double figures, including at least one female and at one spot, three males sparring in the air together. Officially, the maximum afternoon temperature was 8°C, but it was a cloudless sky and locally, in banked hotspots, it felt much warmer than this. Clearly, Wednesday's single individual was not just a one-off!

Here are six different individuals:













All pristine, or in very good nick!

This was one of the hotspots:



And this is some of the speedwell that is the commonest nectar plant for them at this time year:



There were several red admirals around too, but I rarely saw them settle because Queens would chase them off. This one was photographed at some distance, through the vines:



Finally, though in fact it was the first butterfly I saw, I saw my third species of the year - a single, male clouded yellow. I was trapped between lines of vines at the time, and could not approach him, but here he is anyway, into the sun and then from the other side:





It is with some sadness I see these lone winter clouded yellows, because nothing can come of their lives (except whatever joy they get from them). But since no clouded yellows survive the winter most years - many must die in their chrysalises and others not even get past the caterpillar stage - this one is probably one of the lucky ones. He has had a chance to fly, and there are plenty of nectar plants around for him to enjoy.

Guy

[Chris Jackson]

Hi Guy,
I'm glad you've got some butterfly activity taking you through the Winter. Down here in Marseilles it is still mild for the moment, and I'm still seeing Short-tailed Blues.
Chris

[David M]

Ditto. It's nice to see that butterflies are active on the near continent at least (although there have been a few sightings in the UK of late).

Guy, could your Clouded Yellows possibly survive if you had no really cold weather at all or are they condemned the moment the mercury drops below a certain temperature?