Padfield

[William]

Wonderful photo of the submerged Sarasvati!

BWs,

William

[NickMorgan]

Your snowy scenes look idyllic. I wouldn’t mind the closed season for butterflies so much if we had weather like that to enjoy. I am not so keen on our muddy grey weather! Minnie looks a lot cleaner than our dogs are after a walk at this time of year!

[Padfield]

Thank you, William. As I mentioned before, 'Sarasvatī' means 'abounding in or connected with ponds'. Evidently, nominative determinism applies even to caterpillars, as she, of all my larvae, is the one who has most revelled in the rain!

If Minnie's happy, I'm happy, Goldie!

Nick - I thought you'd be enjoying rather similar conditions at the moment. But yes, there is something special about the Alps in the snow. Here are a couple of pictures from today, under mostly grey skies with occasional sunshine breaking through:





Most of my caterpillars are buried deep beneath clinging snow. Sarasvatī is somewhere on this sapling:



For some reason, perhaps because it is exposed to the sun for some of the morning, Trijaṭā's twig never carries so much snow. She was quite exposed this afternoon:



Guy

[Padfield]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1nzpnlMomk[/video]

Guy

[David M]

Minnie sure is a trooper, Guy. I daresay she'd be submerged if it weren't for the footprint trails!

[Padfield]

She's a plucky little thing, David!

It's a reflection of the temperatures here that even though it hasn't snowed for a few days now most of my caterpillars are still buried out of sight. In the shade the snow is still clinging to the twigs and branches and it feels like living in a freezer, albeit a staggeringly beautiful freezer:





Two days ago, I disturbed a green woodpecker in an anthill excavation and by chance grabbed a shot as it burst out of the ground!





Finally, a couple of marginally better shots of Sugrīva, the awkwardly placed iris cat I only recently refound:





Guy

[Padfield]

It was sunny and warm today and for the first time since early January I was able to get down to the Rhône Valley in the afternoon. There, in the vineyards on the sunny side of the valley, the snow is melting and it felt almost balmy, despite the temperature not reaching double figures (centigrade, that is). Unsurprisingly, nothing is flying, but the air is tangibly different from a month ago and if the weather continues there will certainly be Queens and small tortoiseshells on the wing very soon. This time a year ago the Queens had already put in a generation ...

The vineyards today:



The valley floor still looks very wintry:



But there were plenty of flies and lizards around.

In the evening I took a few shots of the Pleiades to see if I could capture the brilliance of this star cluster. The best I produced was this:



With more zoom and enhancement I could bring out more stars but lost the jewel-like character of the cluster.

Last night I took a few shots of the Orion nebula, also in the spirit of experimentation. This first one shows the position of the nebula, in the middle of the 'sword' hanging from Orion's belt:



The colours in the next picture are natural and the structure is correct, but in fact this only shows a tiny part of the nebula. Long-exposure tracking shots reveal nebulosity extending over a much greater region. But even this little bit is good to meditate on - a place where stars are being born even as I type ...



Zooming in more did not really enhance the image:



Guy

[MikeOxon]

My favourite night-sky objects! It's well worth having a go with a camera, just to see the beautiful colours that appear

Mike

[Chris Jackson]

... the air is tangibly different from a month ago ... Guy

You are probably right, Guy, the end of the winter may be in sight. Today we reached 14 °C down in the South of France - the warmest for at least 4 weeks now.
I'm impressed by your woodpecker shot - that was lucky
Nice chilly views of the Rhône Valley.
Chris

[David M]

Fantastic array of images again, Guy. I'm sure it won't be long before your valley is once again populated by butterflies.

[Padfield]

Thanks David. In fact, I saw my first wild butterfly yesterday (on my birthday) - a small tortoiseshell - but it was cruising and offered no photo opportunities. I'm expecting to see small tortoiseshells and Queens tomorrow, given the forecast, too. But today I took myself off to the Papiliorama for a dose of exotica.

Every time I go I see new species. The first today was Phalanta phalantha, the common leopard. This is a delightful, fritillary-like butterfly - really quite exquisite - and I was very happy to see it:





Next, Prepona laertes - closely related to the one- and two-spotted preponas, Archeoprepona demophon and A. demophoon (spot the one and two 'o's, respectively ...):





I also saw two Heliconids I'd never seen before but neither stopped.

A few more photos from the tropics:


(Heliconius ismenius)


(Lexias pardalis)




(two shots of the same Morpho peleides)


(a mature Morpho peleides caterpillar, with an earlier instar in the top right hand corner - this species breeds freely in the Papiliorama)




(Caligo sp.)


(a sunbird [thanks for the correction, bugboy], with Idea leuconoe)


(Papilio constantinus)


(Danaus chrysippus, ssp. alcippus)

This picture shows how the bubbly pattern of the 'jazzy leafwing', Hypna clytemnestra, is actually excellent camouflage:



As always, I took hundreds of photos, so I'll stick to that little selection of butterflies for now.

These two shots show the inside of the Papiliorama ...





... and this the less exotic outside:



Finally, as we waited for the train home, I saw that Minnie was fixated with something in the far distance. Following her gaze, I saw there was a great white heron casually strolling across a field:



It got chased off by a grey heron!

Guy

[David M]

...I saw my first wild butterfly yesterday (on my birthday) - a small tortoiseshell...

Isn't that quite late by Swiss standards?

[bugboy]

Nice pics at papilorama, must take my camera back to my local tropical butterfly house again.

thats a Sunbird, not a hummingbird btw

[Padfield]

Late by recent Swiss standards, David, but historically normal.

Thanks for the correction, bugboy! Sunbird it is!

Guy

[bugboy]

No Problem I love the cats and Jazzy leafwing!

[Padfield]

As predicted, the small tortoiseshells woke up in the valley today, though it was still too cold for the Queens. A bitter wind was preventing any build-up of heat in the usual hotspots and it was probably touch-and-go for the small tortoiseshells too, but they emerged en masse nonetheless. I saw at least 20 and probably many more, throughout the vineyards and Bulbocodium meadows. Here's a selection of different individuals to kick off 2015:











There were also a couple of red admirals cruising around but they didn't stop within range. It is only because I've now got a super-zoom camera that I could get this record shot, at an absurd distance:



That's a tiny crop from a full-zoom picture.

The Bulbocodium is now out ...



... but their meadows are bare and wintry still:



Here is a rock bunting, with a twinkle in his eye:



And a lizard doing the Escher pose:



What, no Minnie? Actually, she is just visible in the Bulbocodium meadows, above, but here she is again, looking the wrong way while a small tortoiseshell lands on the path beyond her:



And finally, the cover picture for my forthcoming book, Five Shades of Grey:


(Château La Bâtiaz, Martigny)

Guy

[bugboy]

And finally, the cover picture for my forthcoming book, Five Shades of Grey:


(Château La Bâtiaz, Martigny)

Hahaha brilliant

[David M]

Love it, Guy. Your new camera has already made a difference!

Good to see things finally kicking off in your valley.

[Chris Jackson]

As predicted, the small tortoiseshells woke up in the valley today....
Guy

Spring is in the air in the South of France as well Guy. Things will get better now day by day.
Chris

[Padfield]

It's still winter here really, Chris - with snow forecast for the next few days. But spring is not so far away ...

Despite a bitterly cold wind, a few Queen of Spain fritillaries were up and about today in the valley - in total I saw eight. It doesn't matter that snow is coming. Providing it is cold snow, which it usually is, today's butterflies will just go torpid a bit and then carry on. Fritillaries are long-lived butterflies and in the past I've identified the same individuals on sunny mornings separated by up to twenty days.

This is one of the three hotspots where they were flying today:



And a few of the butterflies:






(could have been a lovely photo if it han't been swaying in the breeze ...)



Small tortoiseshells were on the wing throughout the vineyards too - I counted 20+






(lots of bottom-sniffing going on - not a lot else!)

Unsurprisingly, a couple of red admirals crossed my path, but much more surprisingly a single large tortoiseshell appeared at one of their favourite haunts and circled a few times before cruising up what is normally a vertical hill territory. But he didn't come back down again, nor could I find him when I set off in pursuit. It was the afternoon and I suspect he had been looking for somewhere to roost.

Guy