Padfield

[Mikhail]

Guy

Like you I suspect that Novus has been got at by bugs, but not necessarily Forest Bugs. Another possible culprit is the Spiked Shieldbug Picromerus bidens, which overwinters in the egg stage, and at this time would be nymphs. I attach an ancient photo showing one with a Speckled Wood larva impaled on its rostrum.

M.

[Padfield]

Thanks Misha. It's a tough life out there. If we're right, and Novus has perished, it will mean that of five wild iris pupae I have found so far (altogether, not just this year) only one has survived and flown away - and he only because I resuced him a few days before emergence when his sallows were cut down.

Do you (or anyone else) have any take on this pile of eggs (in Italy, on the underside of a sycamore leaf)? I forgot to include it in my last post. Spot the parasitic flies already gathering!



Guy

PS - while I'm asking for help, I wonder if anyone knows what species this shieldbug nymph is. It came in on the dog - I'm not sure where from:

[Chris Jackson]

Interesting détails about fagi, Guy. I am now in the Massif Central for 2 weeks and will be looking out particularly for fagi.
Cheers, Chris.

[Padfield]

I'm looking forward to your photos, Chris.

Not much to add today. I had a quick look for more purple emperor pupae (still haven't located Sextus) and while I didn't find any a male (presumed) purple emperor flew over the sallows - so the emergence has started.

Perhaps more interestingly, here is a full grown comma cat making short work of a hazel leaf. Tolman mentions hazel as a foodplant but I hadn't actually seen it before.



The more usual foodplant in my local woods is elm.

Guy

[Padfield]

It has rained almost without a pause for days now. This is exactly when I should be out hunting christi (though even-numbered years are famously bad for this species, so the chances of success would be low anyway) and warrenensis, but there is no possibility of that at the moment. When/if the weather turns stable and dry Minnie and I are going to go bivvying in the Engadine, to look for asteria, but I don't fancy sleeping with a sodden Jack Russell in my bivvy bag.

In the absence of wild butterflies I visited the Papiliorama a couple of days ago, hoping to strike before the school holidays. I mistimed time it - I have never seen the place so full of visitors and it was very difficult to enjoy the butterflies. Nevertheless, I did add one new species to my butterfly house page, bringing the total there to 94. The new species was the huge emperor swallowtail, Papilio ophidicephalus:



The crowds did give me an opportunity to illustrate the transparence of Greta oto's wings:



The first ten days of July have been close to record-breaking for their cold and wet (http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web/fr ... debut.html). Roll on summer!

Guy

[Colin Knight]

Guy, your splendid bug looks like 1st instar Carpocoris pudicus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpocoris_pudicus

[Padfield]

Brilliant - thanks Colin! I'd scrolled through I don't know how many Google images pages, with the search 'shieldbug nymph' or 'hemipteran nymph' and just couldn't place it. But you've nailed it.

Guy

[Padfield]

On Bastille Day 2013 the Emperor Trajan emerged in the safety of my living room and I released him in the woods. This afternoon, Bastille Day 2014, it finally stopped raining (after a 10-day deluge) and Trajan's children, nephews and perhaps nieces took to the air.

First, almost as soon as the sun came out, I spotted a male emperor lurking in the shadows about 200m from where I had released Trajan:



When I approached he flew up and circled me a couple of times before landing on my hip, in the most awkward possible position, just behind Minnie's flexi lead (I wear it attached to my belt so if I have to put her on the lead I still have two hands free):



I held the camera at hip level, pointed it at him, hoped and clicked, without seeing what I was taking - and got this shot, showing his underside colours in all their finery:





Later on the same walk I spotted an emperor in flight, high up in the trees, chasing what seemed to be another emperor, but I saw that third one too briefly to be sure - there are plenty of white admirals about.

Recognising this might be my last chance to find Sextus, I took Minnie home and went back without her, to spend an hour or two searching thorougly, both for Sextus and any other pupae I might find. As I passed Novus's site I saw yet another male emperor, also freshly emerged:



It wasn't Novus, though, who is still on his leaf, dead in his pupal case.

Nor could I find any more pupae, despite extensive searching. They must be out there, but boy are they difficult to find!

Now it's raining again.

Guy

[David M]

That's very sad news regarding Novus, Guy.

It would seem that he/she has been predated during the pupal stage.

Grim though it may be, I hope you will be able to shed light on the cause of his/her demise.

[Padfield]

I probably won't know for certain, David. I won't collect his corpse - it belongs to others now.

Today was a challenging day! I got up early and set off down the hill, only to realise part way down I hadn't got Minnie's lead on my belt. That cost me the early bus to the Simplon (I had to go home and get the lead, of course) and meant I arrived at the bottom of my chosen christi valley in the heat of the day. I had several kilometres to cycle to the site - all uphill and some very steep - and was joined for this by a fellow cyclist, which was nice. But he didn't have a Jack Russell and three litres of water in his backpack so it was something of an ordeal for me to keep the pace! Then, when we got to the off-road part of the climb it turned out to be far too hard for a tiny person with six-inch legs - even four of them. It's basically a 45 degree shale slope with tufting sheep's fescue and she just physically couldn't do it. The rocky bits were fine but the grass might have been a spiked palisade as far as she was concerned. So I carried her most of the way up that climb too, sometimes tossed over my shoulder and sometimes, on the steepest parts, sort of humping her up pace by pace, the way an old lady might hump a heavy bag of shopping up the stairs. I'd left her special backpack with the bike at the bottom.

Eventually, I stood on my favourite rocky perch, from where, last year, I spotted several christi drifting down the cliffs. It was a very long shot, because christi is famously rare in even-numbered years, and it was with no great surprise that two-and-a-half hours later I scrambled back down the hill without a confirmed sighting. What was more surprising, though, was that I saw almost no small Erebia at all. No melampus, just one tyndarus and one epiphron/christi (it looked like christi but I didn't get anywhere near it before it disappeared over a cliff edge). Normally on my christi hunts I net and release dozens of epiphron and melampus before I strike gold. The only really common Erebia was alberganus, with euryale a distant second. I saw a single mnestra and a few aethiops - these were commoner back down by the road, where I had left the bike.

Other species seen from my vantage point were Apollo, sooty copper, scarce copper, purple-edged copper, purple shot copper, little blue, northern brown argus, large blue, chalkhill blue, dark green fritillary, Titania's fritillary, heath fritillary, comma, large wall, great sooty satyr, marbled white, Darwin's heath (abundant, and pure darwiniana that side of the Simplon Pass), large skipper, small skipper, Essex skipper and some species of Pyrgus - but I didn't follow it. Nor did I launch after any of these for photos - the terrain is just too difficult and I preferred to stay put and watch for christi. I usually only do this once a year (twice, successfully, last year) so it's worth doing it properly.

Minnie managed to get down most of the way on her own, but even then I had to carry her for some of the difficult parts. I never took my last dog, Asha, to this site - I suspect even she, a border collie, would have found it difficult.


(Minnie at the lookout point)

Tomorrow will be much easier: Grindelwald for Erebia sudetica - a much more domestic species!

Guy

[Padfield]

Confucius once observed that the butterfly you can't photograph is the one sitting on your camera. Frank learnt the truth of these words today when a particularly fine but mischievous Erebia sudetica, the species I had promised him, landed the wrong side of close:





I did say sudetica was more domestic than christi!

Of just five sudetica we saw today (Erebia in general were thin on the ground, with the notable exception of oeme) this was the best marked - and it had a thing about people, first feeding on Frank's rucksack behind his back, then on his camera, and then, when I tried to relocate it to a flower, on my finger.





I did manage a few photos in slightly more natural surroundings, but it didn't stay there long:



Erebia sudetica is an extremely local species, found in Switzerland only in the region of Grindelwald (I don't normally mention places, but this is so well known it makes no difference). I tracked it down last year, using Google Earth and footwork, and found it in exactly the same places this year.

The last ten days of rain have taken their toll, I think. In mixed cloud and sun we saw some lovely butterflies today but in very subdued numbers, and including several crumpled and deformed specimens - which I presume had chosen emergence in suboptimal conditions over dying in the chrysalis. That was a little sad. This sudetica could fly, but only buzzily:



Species seen included large skipper, small skipper, Essex skipper, dingy skipper, Apollo, large white, small white, green-veined white, black-veined white, wood white, pale clouded yellow (I netted one and it seemed to be pale clouded - and I saw no confirmed Berger's - there were huge quantities of clover in many of the meadows), orange tip, little blue, large blue, mazarine blue, turquoise blue, silver-studded blue, chalkhill blue, sooty copper, purple-edged copper, small tortoiseshell, heath fritillary, false heath fritillary, silver-washed fritillary, dark green fritillary, Niobe fritillary, Titania's fritillary, meadow brown, large wall, alpine heath, small heath.


(a more weakly marked sudetica)


(oeme - passion in the grass)


(Frank photographing a turquoise blue)


(Niobe fritillary)

And a picture of me and Minnie Frank sent this evening:



Oh, and I was lying about Confucius.

Guy

[David M]

How bad has this summer been in your part of the world, Guy?

Can you rate it according to the last 20 or so you've experienced?

[Padfield]

Pretty much the best, David. It's been a brilliant year for butterflies. The ten days of rain took their toll on a number of individuals but will have no long-term effect, even so far as the rest of the summer is concerned.

Guy

[David M]

Pretty much the best, David. It's been a brilliant year for butterflies. The ten days of rain took their toll on a number of individuals but will have no long-term effect, even so far as the rest of the summer is concerned.

Guy

.

Really?

That surprises me given how dank and grim things have been lately in la Suisse

[Padfield]

It has been grim at times, David - record-breaking grim at the beginning of July - but with the single exception of christi, which was expected, the butterflies have excelled themselves.

One butterfly in particular has excelled itself - the cardinal. Last year's bonanza was no flash in the pan. Since May 4th cardinals have been on tap in the Rhône Valley and, as I reported in June, have even ventured up into the mountains. This afternoon I nipped down to the main site, where the buddleia is now coming into flower, and saw at least three males and three females. The males were all intent on dominating the world and never stopped for more than a few seconds - but I know there were at least three because at one point three were zooming around me all at the same time. The females settled and nectared far more often, and again, I know there were at least three because I saw three on different flower heads at the same time. So the cardinal has now established itself at the western end of the Rhône Valley. It will be very interesting to see how widespread reports of the species are this year - there is no reason why it shouldn't spread east along the valley, given the extreme mobility of the butterfly.





Guy

[Padfield]

I forgot to upload a video I took in the Rhône Valley the day of my last post. It shows a group of black-veined whites (including a rather strange, bendy-winged but apparently happy one) and a marbled skipper at mud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV1exD7w2fI[/video]

Guy

[Padfield]

In much of Switzerland, July has smashed all historical records for rainfall and if general meteorological gloom could be quantised it would probably have smashed records for that too. Since my last post I've only got out once (a couple of days ago), and while I picked up a lot of year ticks the number of butterflies about was very low. They were also frantically active between cloud spells, as if desperately trying to make the most of what little sun there would be in their short lives.

Yesterday and today returned to form (rain), though there were glimpses of sun today. On my afternoon walk I had a quick look for iris eggs and found two (and also saw my first female iris of the year).

The first egg I found was the classic two-tone green and maroon, indicating that it was laid a few days ago:





The second looked a much paler turquoise colour from a distance and had not yet developed that dark band. This indicates it was laid very recently - perhaps today:





I never name them before they hatch, but because both these eggs are on my daily dog-walk there is a good chance one of them will be christened - and I hope to find more if the weather improves and female purple emperors are able to get out and do their stuff.

Guy

[David M]

So frustrating for you, Guy, given that most of the UK has had an abnormally hot spell this last week (certainly it has been the best week since I moved to Swansea 4 years ago).

I'm sure normal service will be resumed fairly soon.

[NickMorgan]

I am sorry to hear about the continued bad weather. It is really frustrating for us butterfly enthusiasts. Hopefully the butterfly population will bounce back. It is amazing how resilient they are. We had such a bad year in 2012 with almost continual rain and bad flooding. In 2013 the spring butterflies were low in number as a result, but the second generation was the best we have seen in a long time. 2014 has proved to be even better!

[Padfield]

Thanks for the commiserations, David and Nick! It actually stayed dry until about 15h00 today (after which it poured!) and occasionally the sun even shone, giving Minnie and me a chance to check for iris eggs again. Apologies for the low quality of these images ...

Yesterday's fresh egg had already browned up by midday today:



Nearby was another, that I hadn't spotted yesterday, apparently still browning up:



I found another egg, already fully coloured up, a little further along, giving me four in total (so far ...) to keep an eye on. I wonder if this is the only photo in existence with a purple emperor egg and a Jack Russell in the same frame:



Here is a slightly closer view of that one:



One species that seems to have been rather badly affected by the wet weather is white-letter hairstreak. Normally, this is conspicuous in my local woods throughout July. This year, while I have seen a very few at the tops of Ash trees - their favourite lekking spots round here - I hadn't had one come down until today. Here it is, set against a background of rather ominous clouds:



Finally, a species that doesn't mind the poor weather - here is a female Scotch argus:



Guy