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.
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/minnie15july2014a.jpg)
(Minnie at the lookout point)
Tomorrow will be much easier: Grindelwald for
Erebia sudetica - a much more domestic species!
Guy