Butterflies of Var, Southern France

[Chris Jackson]

Some lovely photos Roger, and that figure of 74 species within a 1 km radius is pretty mind boggling - I am quite blazé myself with a local figure in the high 40s . As you go inland and uphill things only get better. Will you be back later in the season for the graylings?
Chris

[David M]

Delightful stuff, Roger. 74 species within close proximity to your base is mouth-watering.

[Roger Gibbons]

I am only back in the UK for ten days, then back to Var hopefully in time for Spanish Gatekeeper, Western Marbled White, Spanish Purple Hairstreak and the Satyrium hairstreak explosion. It's a great time to be in that part of the world.

Chris, I'm sure your local tally will increase significantly and that you will find new species every year. In many cases, there will have been no prior records.

Roger

[Lee Hurrell]

Just lovely, Roger.

I liked the Festoon film too, having never seen either species! Interesting that the narrator describes the caterpillars as female at one point, can that be distinguished?

Best wishes,

Lee

[Chris Jackson]

Hi Roger,
I'm just bouncing back from your post in CFB's diary on this topic:

Quote Roger => "Les-Bouches-du-Rhône is perhaps the least-endowed département but I’m prepared to be that Chris is finding species in locations not previously known"

Firstly, it does seem to me that relatively few French are interested in butterflies compared to ... say ... the British, and that perhaps therefore their records may be a little less accurate ?
In the preface to the Atlas of Butterflies of Provence, Alpes, Cote d'Azur, there is a statement that goes something along these lines "You don't start counting what you've got, until you realise that you havn't got much of it left!!!" with an obvious reference to the UK.

Secondly, have you noticed that the aforementioned PACA BF Atlas does not make reference to the Rock Grayling? Do you think its just an oversight? Because I know where there are some, come August

Cheers, Chris

[Padfield]

Hi Chris. What are your grounds for calling that hermione (= alcyone)? Is it from the size? By the markings (which are, of course, notoriously unreliable in this case) it looks more like fagi.

Guy

[Roger Gibbons]

Chris, feel free to put whatever you like in this thread. It’s one I started quite a while back before the invention of UKB diaries.

It’s hot here in Var at the moment, 33C and still 30C at 20.00. Yesterday I went to a location near St-Paul-en-Forêt, a woodland track of about 50m adjacent to a small stream. I counted over 30 species and the total number of butterflies was in the hundreds. Fritillaries included Silver-washed, Niobe, Heath (dozens of them), Spotted, Twin-spot, Marbled. Blues included Escher’s (at least 15), Adonis, Provence Chalk-hill, Osiris, Mazarine, Chapman’s. Hairstreaks included Ilex, False Ilex, Blue-spot, Sloe. In the heat they were all hyperactive, flying at breakneck speed until the latter part of the afternoon.

The main attraction was the tree/bush Christ’s Thorn (Paliurus spina-christi). If you encounter this bush, take a close look as it is highly attractive as a nectar source.

[Chris Jackson]

Roger,
It looks like your Woodland track is a real hot-spot for butterflies.

Could I ask your opinion on an ID matter please?
I've looked at your photos and descriptions on your site but I'm still uncertain.
Below I have added (what I believed to be) a photo of fagi and alcyone with context. What do you think? In any case in July/August I will concentrate my efforts on getting better photos of alcyone, not far from where I live, to elucidate this uncertainty.
fagi : early July, Massif Central, 900 meters altitude, Woodland environment, relatively lush

alcyone : early August, Marseille, flank of Mont St Cyr, 300 meters altitude, hot, dry, calcareous

- fagi was big and bold (as it flew by it looked like a large Great Banding Grayling (my first reaction)).
- alcyone was small and timid (it mingled with Striped Grayling on the sandy ground)
Thanks, Chris

[Sylvie_h]

You are right Roger, Christ’s Thorn (Paliurus spina-christi) is highly attractive as a nectar source. When I was in North Western Greece a few years ago, this tree was a magnet for Nettle Tree butterflies. On one tree, I remember counting a total of 47 of this species and all very active in the heat of the day. I had never seen anything like it. It is also the foodplant of the little tiger blue if you are in SE Europe...
Sylvie

[Roger Gibbons]

Hi Sylvie,

There was a Nettle Tree (Libythea celtis) right at the top of the bush yesterday at St Paul, one of about ten species on this one bush.

Today we went to a good site for Spanish Purple Hairstreak (Laeosopis roboris) in mid-Var, and they were out in good numbers (20+) but mostly trying to hide from the 36C heat. There were several Christ’s Thorn bushes and of course there was a Nettle Tree right at the top of one. There were also a few Spanish Gatekeepers (Pyronia bathseba) and a Lang’s Short-tailed Blue (Leptotes pirithous) among the 31 species there.

Chris, your question about fagi and alcyone is one of the most difficult in the whole of French butterflies. I’m really not sure about the “little bite” out of the discal line as this line varies enormously. My feeling is that the most reliable indicator is the area above the unf ocellus. This seems clear in alcyone but murky and touching the ocellus in fagi; I find this to be fairly constant when coupled with size, which as you say is clear in the field. It would be interesting to ask Guy why he is confident that yours (posted 9 June) is fagi. I think this one is difficult to call especially as it is worn and you (I) cannot see the ocellus.

Curiously (or perhaps not), alcyone is often found on rocks and fagi on trees, but if they thought we had twigged that one, they would switch just to fool us.

There is much debate about alcyone/genava which seems not to have been finally resolved.

[Padfield]

Hi all! Yes, fagi/hermione (current orthdoxy ) is a difficult one. The only generally recognised statistically reliable (but not 100%) non-invasive criterion is size - a forewing of 33mm being the upper boundary for hermione and the lower for fagi. Other criteria are probably locally variable - so what works reliably in Switzerland (for example) might not in Spain - especially as the Swiss rock graylings are of the disputed taxon genava. I certainly didn't mean to suggest I was confident Chris's first image was fagi - only that from the markings it looked most like this. I use a medley of criteria apart from size in the field. One, which is related to Roger's and which works very well in central and western Europe (though seems to be contradicted by some pictures in Lafranchis's latest book, unfortunately) is the presence of a more or less well-defined 'eyebrow' in hermione, following the contour of the ocellus. There is no hint of this eyebrow in Chris's example, though the ocellus is clearly visible.

Swiss hermione (genava):



Spanish hermione (alcyone)



Spanish fagi:



Other criteria concern the relative width and demarcation of the white band (whose outer edge typically follows the inner more closely in hermione) and the prominence of the white hindwing spots - though this last is locally very variable.

Males are relatively easy to determine from the upperside, but this is very rarely seen in the field.

Guy

[Chris Jackson]

Thank you Guy and Roger for your explanations. It certainly is a complex matter. I must get clearer photos this year to try and resolve this. Given the worn appearance of my "hermione?", it probably emerges a couple of weeks before the beginning of August when my photos were taken. This individual was in a very small colony along a 10-meter length of track, which I have successfully relocated 2 years in row, so I will try and track it down earlier this year. Thanks again and I'll give you feedback if I get it.
Chris

[FISHiEE]

You are right Roger, Christ’s Thorn (Paliurus spina-christi) is highly attractive as a nectar source. When I was in North Western Greece a few years ago, this tree was a magnet for Nettle Tree butterflies. On one tree, I remember counting a total of 47 of this species and all very active in the heat of the day. I had never seen anything like it. It is also the foodplant of the little tiger blue if you are in SE Europe...
Sylvie

I also recall seeing about 30+ nettle tree butterflies on one of these trees in the Luberon region of Provence a few years ago. I had always wondered what that tree was as the nettle trees were going nuts for it together with many huge metalic green beetles. I'd only see the odd one or two anywhere else in the area but this tree seemed to draw them like a magnet! Now I can give that tree a name

[Sylvie_h]

Hi Roger and Fiishie,

If you have a closer look (with a magnifier) at the little flowers of the Christ's thorn, you will understand why the butterflies are attracted to it. The flowers are full of juicy nectar and as there are a lot of flowers, the nectar source is plentiful.
Another tree that is a good nectar source for butterflies, beetles, bees etc is the lime tree. In the South of Europe when it is hot during the day, the buzz of insects on the flowers of this tree can be quite incredible... I have heard that the nectar is actually toxic and that Bees get disorientated if drinking too much of it, but I don't know whether that is true.
Sylvie

[Chris Jackson]

Hi all,

Another tree that is a good nectar source for butterflies, beetles, bees etc is the lime tree. In the South of Europe when it is hot during the day, the buzz of insects on the flowers of this tree can be quite incredible... Sylvie

Now there's a coincidence Sylvie, around the 8th June, barely a week ago, in my local Parc des Bruyères, I recorded the flowering of a small number of Lime trees we have there. And yes, they do attract a multitude of nectaring insects and predating crab spiders.

Chris

[Matsukaze]

Hi All,

Visiting northern Var earlier in the month, I learned the meaning of the phrase a cloud of hairstreaks for the first time, as the little unobtrusive ones descend to ground level, unlike in the UK. I struggled to identify them though...the Blue-spot was fairly straightforward, except that the blue spot serves as a target for bird attacks, and when it has been removed the butterfly becomes harder to identify. I got confused over Sloe, Ilex and False Ilex though - I think these are all Ilex except the last (Sloe) but would appreciate confirmation.

[Matsukaze]

Pyrgus - I think these are all cirsii - the first in Var at around 500m, the others in Alpes de Haute-Provence, the first at 900m, the others at 1300m. These last three individuals were definitely on the large side.

I have more trouble sorting out Carcharodus, probably because I have seen so few alceae that I do not have a good feel for them yet. What are these two?

[Matsukaze]

Also mystified by this white, where one side appears to be Small and the other side Green-veined...pertinent to me as I have never seen Green-veined outside the UK.

[Padfield]

Hi Matsukaze. I would say your first hairstreak is blue-spot and the rest false ilex, except for the last, which is sloe as you say.

As for the skippers, the Pyrgus set all look like carthami to me. Carcharodus is generally easier in the field than in single photos, but the first one certainly has a ring of flocciferus about it and the next one - well, I would even suggest baeticus ...

I can't see anything other than green-veined in the white.

Guy

[David M]

I can't see anything other than green-veined in the white.

Me neither. It can't be anything else to be honest.