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Paul Wetton wrote:Will all this early emergence have a knock on effect for my visit later in the year, do you think, or will everything have settled into a more normal thythm by the end of June?

I think the early season will affect what you see, Paul, though this won't be negative unless you have particular targets which risk burning out before you get here. For every butterfly that does finish early there will be others coming early onto the wing, so I don't think there's anything to worry about.

Today continued the trend for early appearances, with the first Adonis blues flying. This one, warming up at about 10.30am, was the first of many, including one female:



Surprisingly, a turquoise blue was also on the wing, my earliest date for that species by some considerable margin:



Camberwell beauties are not so prominent this year as last - I think they prefer a harsher winter - but they are still quite easy to find. This one is defending his territory along a path by the river:



Here are a few other piccies from two sites in the Rhône Valley:


(Holly blue)


(Green-underside blue)


(Rosy grizzled skipper, Pyrgus onopordi)


(Scarce swallowtail)


(Mallow skipper)


(Berger's pale clouded yellow)


(Wood white)

All the real hibernators were flying (no red admirals seen). Small tortoiseshells were ragged beyond decent but large tortoiseshells still have some dignity:



It's a truly lovely time of year.

Guy

Lovely pictures again, Guy. Particularly like the Adonis

Lee

I went hunting locally for short-tailed blues today, and drew a blank. Interestingly, the early year seems patchy, and there was very little at all flying at my chosen site, at about 550m. Despite copious quantities of kidney vetch there were no little blues yet, and I have yet to see any Aricia species. Nevertheless, territorial swallowtails and scarce swallowtails were lovely to see, as always, and this female brimstone posed beautifully for me. The reason so many of my scenic pictures involve butterflies on dandelions is that this flower, with so many nectaries, allows the photographer time to choose the background and creep in close without spooking the insect.



Guy

Lovely photos again Guy, a joy to see.

Yep! Not just a pretty face, eh Guy!

A student cancelled a lesson, leaving me a free hour to go and see if the first pearl-bordered fritillaries were flying locally. They were. Freshly emerged males were roding for females in the heat of the afternoon (2.30pm), just very occasionally resting on the ground for a few seconds before continuing their quest. They never nectared while I was there, though I didn't have long at all.

Here is one. He's what Jack might call a 'voucher' specimen, but a jolly fine individual anyway:



Summer is nigh.

Guy

Hello Guy

Thanks for the information. I have no real target species. I just want to see as many as possible. Greedy I know.

Some more great photos posted Guy. keep up the good work.

Guy, i love your habitat shots. That Brimstone on the Dandelion pic is great.

Great pictures Guy. You seem to get a very good depth of field with your camera. Thanks for sharing them.

The shots with big depth of field are taken with wide-angle from very close up, to maximise the apparent size of the butterfly relative to hills and trees. Typically, they are from about 5cm, the closest my camera can go without using macro. The depth of field is inevitably less when I take pictures with zoom.

For the Camberwell beauty shot, for example, I inched in until I was standing right over the butterfly, then moved the camera down in slow motion until it was 5cm behind the butterfly. This shot, from just before the final approach, shows where I was with respect to the beauty (the projection on the left of my hand is the butterfly - I was just clipping its wing with my shadow):



I must have held my breath for over a minute while I took three or four pictures. And I'm proud to say I backed off without the Camberwell beauty even knowing I had been in there! There's a real sense of achievement, when you've retreated and are gulping in all the air you didn't dare breathe earlier, to see the butterfly still vigilant in the same place, completely oblivious to your presence.

Guy

I've just redone the cropping on that picture, so LOTSW1 members can recognise the patch: it's where the ilex hairstreaks and Meleager's blues were flying.



This individual's territory ran as far as where the path disappears (in the picture). Another individual had the patch after that. This was the best shot I could get of that one, as it spent less time perched and more time cruising up and down:



This is a species you can just watch, for hours. That second individual would fly one way along the path and then fly back along the river, almost seeming to relish the rushing stream beneath him. Wonderful.

Guy

Gorgeous pics Guy

i especially liked the Clouded Yellow...interesting background foliage there.
also the Mallow Skipper which reminded me of my trips to France

Charles

Butterflies galore. I recorded 40 species today, visiting two sites, the first a little way into the hills and the second in the valley floor.

In the hills, things were quite calm until near midday, when blues started gathering at mud. Not that nothing happened before that - I saw my first Apollos of the year, as well as my first olive skipper - but midday was when things began creeping out of the woodwork.

This little group comprises two green-underside blues, three Osiris blues, three little blues, one Provençal short-tailed blue and one Adonis blue:



This is an Osiris blue trying to push a Provençal short-tailed blue off his favourite bit of mud. He didn't succeed - the PSTB stayed in there, despite being completely shaded:



Some more blues pics:


(Turquoise)


(Provençal short-tailed)


(Green-underside)


(Adonis)


(Common)


(Baton)

And a small selection of others:


(Safflower skipper)


(Dingy skipper)


(Pearl-bordered fritillary)


(Bath white)


(Berger's pale clouded yellow)


(Grizzled skipper - malvoides)

I photographed pretty well everything I saw, so I could go on and on! But I hope these piccies give a feel of how Switzerland is really beginning to come alive now. With rain forecast again the offspring of all these creatures should have plenty of lush vegetation to feed on.

Guy

Great photos, Guy. How can you tell a Pale Clouded yellow from a Berger's though?

Hi David,

Berger's is common, local, resident (in calcareous areas) and sedentary. PCY is much scarcer (here), appearing chiefly as a migrant, so particularly uncommon in spring. When external features are ambiguous (which they're not here - this is clearly Berger's from the wing shape) the default species is Berger's.

Since everyone's going for videos, here's one of some butterflies on mud that I took today. It's taken with my compact camera and so not great quality, but it's a scene to warm the heart anyway!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve3-QFI8XD0[/video]

Guy

I love your video, Guy

Thanks Susie. Not up to yours, though...

I nipped out for half an hour this afternoon and quickly found my first sooty copper of the year, looking very smart:



This is the dark, alpine form. At lower altitudes male sooty coppers have much more orange.

That was the only male I saw, but shortly afterwards I spotted this female skulking around in the undergrowth:



Females do not seem to vary in darkness according to altitude.

While I watched, she deposited these very carefully under a sorrel stem (Rumex scutatus):



Curious little eggs! I imagine that structure is particularly strong, so they can resist being trodden on by grazing animals in the meadows where this butterfly flies, but that is only speculation.



Guy

Happy Easter, all!

After Easter celebrations in the morning, and quite a lot of booze, I cycled precariously down to the valley in the afternoon to look for short-tailed blues. This species is rather rare in Switzerland, especially in my region, but in the last few years I think I've cracked it. I've found a field where it has flown now for four successive generations. The spring generation is very low in numbers and I suspect the population is not self-sustaining, being supplemented by immigrants in the summer. Today a single male was flying:





Here is a more contextual shot.



The weakness of the orange spotting visible here does make me wonder if the individual I saw a couple of weeks ago at the same site was also short-tailed and not Provençal short-tailed as I had then decided. The tail of that individual was curiously long for Provençal and the butterfly was interested in birdsfoot trefoil. Mmm... Maybe I made a mistake. Anyway, this present individual is most certainly short-tailed.

That was species 59 for the year. I thought it would be nice to reach 60 by Easter, so although it was a little late I headed off to another site where I felt confident I could find red underwing skipper before the light faded. I was right:



A few other species hung in at the same site until the last minute, when the sun went round the mountain:


(Green-underside blue)


(Common blue)


(Pearl-bordered frit, just after the sun left the site)

Guy

More beautiful photographs, thanks for sharing, Guy

At my old stamping grounds, near Barboleuse, the Dukes are out.









It so happens I visited exactly the same site on 25th April last year. I noted in my diary then that things were not at all advanced, that the grass was nowhere near long enough for Dukes yet and that I saw no meadow fritillaries or blues. Well, this year, things are moving nicely! There were plenty of Dukes, plenty of meadow fritillaries (even a false heath fritillary) and blues galore, including little blue.

Guy