Padfield

[Padfield]

Poplar admiral, Limenitis populi, is widespread but rather rare in Switzerland. The female is the largest Swiss butterfly but even the male dwarfs anything around it. Trevor does not exaggerate - you have to see this amazing species to appreciate it.

I arrived at my chosen site at 10h00 and between then and 12h00 saw at least 6 and possibly 8 males. About then, Matt Rowlings telephoned to say the day was too hot where he was and nothing was flying, so I encouraged him to join me at the populi site, with the caveat that numbers would probably go down in the afternoon. They didn't. Minnie and I waited for Matt at the parking spot, watching a very amenable male. Matt arrived, quickly followed by some walkers with two huge hounds, and still the populi stayed there, intent on taking minerals. I showed Matt the populi track I had discovered and in two hours we saw 10 individuals, all males. There is no Swiss signal there (only French) so I didn't get CC's request for habitat pictures. But essentially the males fly independently of aspen, near at least one area where aspen is very dense. They also kept very much to the shade - more so than the hyper-abundant camilla - making photography strangely difficult for such a huge, easy butterfly.

Some pictures:








(a medium-sized male dwarfs camilla)






(but sometimes camilla trampled on populi)


(OK - populi's bigger)

This one has particularly strong white bands on the hindwing:




(trousers courtesy of Matt)



That individual was easy to pick up. The finger is Matt's:





Two populi in this picture...



... and in this:







Matt in action:



This really doesn't happen very often! A good day.

Guy

[bugboy]

Bloody hell Guy! I just jumped from Kevlings lovely selection of Swallowtail pictures to this amazing encounter. Think I am going to have to stop browsing on here when I can't go out myself, it's just too much!!! All I've had is two very brief Speckled Wood flybys today at work....

[trevor]

HI again Guy,
Images 1 and 9 really do justice to this species, the underside is clearly ' Admiral ', whereas the
upperside shows signs of Emperor. I have never seen a Poplar Admiral ' in the flesh ', but i will
certainly put that right one day !. Thanks for the lovely images.

Looking forward to H.I.M. in a couple of weeks, a Butterfly i can access !.
Best wishes,
TREVOR.

[Jack Harrison]

Stunning photos Guy of a stunning butterfly.

And there I was yesterday getting excited about a POSSIBLE female Orange Tip.

Jack

[Cotswold Cockney]

Superbly interesting pictures Guy.

What was the main attractant? Hard to tell but in one or two images, looks like animal excrement.

If the day was very hot then looks like human sweat provided some sustenance in the dry habitat. Do the females feed in this same way ?

[Padfield]

Thank you all for the comments. The butterfly is hugely better in the flesh than in any of my pictures!

CC - the densest concentrations of Limenitis were on carnivore dung but horses walk all the rides and the soil was clearly impregnated with horse dung (accumulated over many years) throughout. When not on carnivore dung with the camilla, the populi were supping at the seemingly bare ground, usually in dappled shade. One was particularly attracted to my shoes and landed on them and took minerals from them as I passed in both directions, with some time in between. Another was strongly attracted to Matt's trousers. It showed no timidity at all when he poked his finger at it and picked it up. One individual that I first saw at 11h00 was still guzzling at the same lump of dung at 14h30, when I passed with Matt. All individuals seemed engaged solely in consuming, not at all in defending territories, hunting females &c. It really was a most interesting day.

Jack - if I knew why it was so rare out here I might be able to guess whether it could cross the channel. But I don't. Aspen is a common tree - the butterfly is anything but.

Guy

[William]

Superb stuff Guy, a real beast of a butterfly! Those comparisons with the White Admiral, in particular, are quite astonishing.

BWs,

William

[David M]

One of your best sequences ever, Guy (and there is plenty of competition!)

Fantastic stuff.

[Nick Broomer]

Stunning photos, Guy. If the butterflies are more beautiful in the flesh, then they must be more than stunning.

All the best, Nick.

[Pauline]

Guy, oh Guy, what a fabulous butterfly. It pains me that I shall never be able to travel to see these beautiful and exotic creatures but your wonderful photos go a long way in making up for that

[Jack Harrison]

Images 1 and 9 really do justice to this species

The entire set does the species (and camilla) justice.

I know the operator behind the camera is far more important than the camera itself (you and many others on ukb would manage to take excellent photos with pinhole camera) but please remind me Guy what camera do you use?

I have to confess to a little self interest here. My wife's point-and-shoot has just failed (jammed lens protection leaves) so it might be time to get her a new one.
Not that I would ever want to borrow it of course.......

Jack

[kevling]

Fantastic sequence Guy. I cannot believe their size compared with Camilla.

Regards Kev

[Padfield]

Thank you all, again, for your kind comments. Even in Switzerland, days like that don't come round very often!

Jack, my camera is a Canon PowerShot SX520 HS. It was very cheap and I make it work well for me but I'm not sure I would recommend it for your purposes (point-and-shoot for your wife, back-up butterfly camera for you). There are several annoying disadvantages, which I won't list here but which I think would affect you more than me. A smaller-bodied Canon compact might be better, if you go down the Canon line.

Yesterday's early rise and exertions in the heatwave (coupled with copious quantities of beer) left me quite tired and I made no attempt to get up early today, intending to stay in and work. But the heatwave continued and it was impossible to work, so after a morning check on the emperor cats Minnie and I took to the wheels again and spent the afternoon in the Rhône Valley. I thought it would be good to add the third species of Limenitis, reducta (southern white admiral), which is normally on the wing by now. It was, but unusually I only saw one individual, a freshly emerged male defending a high, rather inaccessible perch:



He was highly aggressive. There were a few geriatric (but to be fair, equally aggressive) Camberwell Beauties around which occasionally dared to venture into his territory and he saw them off with vigour, pursuing them until they were over 100m away. Here is one of the pugnacious beauties:



He is at least 10 and possibly 11 months old - would you pick on a senior citizen like that?

Other new species for the year were large skipper and Swiss Zephyr blue (Plebejus trappi):





I expected to see loads of Provençal fritillaries, Melitaea deione berisalii but surprisingly saw just one, very fresh male. It was just after I arrived and I hadn't even unpacked Minnie, let alone my camera, so no pictures.

Here are a safflower skipper, Pyrgus carthami and a couple of black-veined whites:





Normally the place is alive with marbled fritillaries but only a few were on the wing today:



I also saw plenty of violet fritillaries and at least one larger fritillary, which looked like high brown but never stopped so I couldn't be certain.

Guy

[Padfield]

I'm beginning to wonder if white admiral larvae behave differently out here from in the UK. The books say the pupae are easy to find and pupate beneath a leaf of the plant the caterpillars have been feeding on. So far, both this year and last, every caterpillar I have followed has reached full maturity, appeared ready to pupate and promptly disappeared. It is not difficult to search every single leaf of a honeysuckle plant and in every case I can confirm the caterpillar was not on or under any of them. There is just one caterpillar left now on my regular trail. He is so near my house I check on him every day. He is full-grown but not quite ready for pupation yet. This is him today:





The pictures were taken about an hour apart - he is quite an active chap!

For the emperor cats, Nakula and Kālī have both left their final seat leaves and gone off to pupate. I haven't located either of them yet but there is still hope! Only Māyā remains in her usual place. To be fair, this is partly because she has nowhere to go. This photo was taken yesterday:



It was completely overcast today and just one butterfly was on the wing in the woods - this male large wall:



Guy

[Pauline]

Morning Guy, last year I followed 2 WA in the wild and just at the point of pupation they disappeared. I initially considered birds and/or collectors. However, I was reading your diary (then as now) and aware of your similar experiences so I became convinced that despite what the books say, they must have wandered off onto neighbouring dense plants to pupate. This was one of the reasons I wanted to rear WA to see if they showed any inclination to wander. As you may be aware, the one I have reared only moved for more food and pupated in situ. Perhaps they differ from individual to individual. I look forward to more of your reports.

[Padfield]

Many thanks for your input, Pauline.

The larva I showed in the last post is not far from my house and also on quite a large honeysuckle bush. If/when it disappears I will be able to check every leaf (as I have already done with the ones on smaller bushes). It will have to go a long way to leave the bush completely. And searching honeysuckle is a lot less neck-breaking than staring up into the sun through the canopy of a sallow ...

In the end, if you watch enough, you catch a cat in the act, and then you can follow it. Until then, it's just a lot of searching!

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

In the end, if you watch enough, you catch a cat in the act, and then you can follow it.

Might time lapse video be feasible? Would save a lot of watching and waiting but arguably, not "cricket".

Jack

[Cotswold Cockney]

Both White Admirals and Hungarian Gliders in Captivity do wander off their foodplant and seek a covert place to pupate elsewhere. I have often observed Insectivorous Birds seek and search very diligently in the greenery for any larvae and pupae to feed their young. So larvae wise to leave the greenery. I often wonder how many beautiful moths and butterflies are sacrificed to feed say a brood of ten Blue Tits until they fledge. Again in captivity in my experience, the Poplar Admiral does tend to pupate on the twigs of its foodplant which tend to be massive trees. This is the only image I have to hand showing this. A composite image of several 6x4 prints. No such digital stuff thirty years ago when I bred a lot of stuff ... :~



The three other prints show an example of the magnificent Prepona species I bred on of all things Avocado. Their superb upper wing colouration of blues and iridescent purples are a delight to my eyes. These along with their close relatives the Agrias are my favourites of all the butterflies.

[Padfield]

Hi Jack. I think time lapse photography would be feasible, given good enough equipment and private land to set it up on. The camera would need to be high definition over a substantial depth of field, given that white admiral cats are little more than an inch long when they pupate and might wander several metres (to mix my SI and imperial ...). If I had such equipment I wouldn't leave it on the kind of public footpaths where I walk my dog and see all these larvae - paths shared by walkers, runners, mountain bikers, clandestine fishermen and schoolkids on camping expeditions!

Thank you for your input CC - very interesting (and wonderful pictures too). My experience of (Archeo)prepona is all in butterfly houses but I agree, they are lovely creatures. I guess it makes sense, when feeding is no longer an issue, for white admiral caterpillars to leave the lush leaves where predators would naturally expect fat cats to be lurking. But given the appearance of the white admiral pupa, so closely resembling a withered leaf, I imagine it always does pupate among vegetation - just not somewhere so conspicuous and accessible as where I watch them feeding up, nor necessarily on honeysuckle.

Here is my nearest white admiral cat today:



I can watch and even photograph Māyā, my remaining emperor cat, from some distance and will do that daily for the rest of her final instar to avoid wearing a track through the undergrowth to where she is. She has been in 5th instar exactly a week , meaning she has probably another week and a half of maturing before pupation. As I have mentioned, she is on a tiny spindling of sallow, barely 4 ft tall, and rapidly running out of leaves. There's enough for her to eat but it is an improbable place to pupate.

Here is a long-distance shot of her taken this afternoon:



Guy

[Cotswold Cockney]

When I used to regularly breed insects, I once put out from my green house in midwinter a 1.5 Metre high potted Aspen containing a dozen Limenitis populi hibernacula. Did that as I do with many hibernating larvae, including various Apaturinae species. That to take advantage of some light winter rain. I have seen hibernating Apatura iris ( PEs ) larvae in their Sussex broadleaf English habitats in January in continuous rain. The larvae covered completely in a film of running water for over twelve hours. So, in captivity I try to introduce some near natural moisture as it is most beneficial.

That was a BIG mistake with those Poplar Admiral hibernacula! I returned half an hour later to see a female House Sparrow with some agility in the process of removing the last of the L. populi larvae from each of the cryptic hibernaculum tubes >>>

Every hibernacula tube had been expertly opened and the contents removed! How could an English House Sparrow know about such things? That Sparrow cleared the tree. Long time ago now but ever since when allowing winter rain to naturally wet any hibernating larvae, I enclose the bush or potted sapling with an envelope of 1/2" Mesh Chicken Wire. No more problems.

It was during my January observations of hibernating A.iris larvae that I saw wave after wave of birds systematically working through all the bushes and trees in the copse. So many diligent birds it's a wonder any larvae manage to escape their predatory attentions and produce adult insects next summer. Nature.. red in tooth and wossname ...