Today's mission was my first lifer of the year -
Polyommatus humedasae, or Piedmont anomalous blue, which only flies in the Aosta Valley of Italy, where it is known at only three locations (see
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/17941/0). For some reason, I've never popped over to look for it before. The forecast for Aosta was not good but the forecast for Switzerland was worse so I set off with a friend, Markus, from Munich, on a butterfly holiday here, hoping for the best. As it turned out, it was sunny most of the time we were in Italy but Switzerland remained under heavy cloud all day (and it's raining as I write ...).
We had an hour to kill in Aosta itself, waiting for a bus, so I casually suggested looking for geranium bronze. When I'm travelling around southern Europe by bus this is often a fruitful way of spending forced time in towns. Italians love their Pelargoniums and it didn't take long for Markus to find a couple of eggs on an ornamental flower bed in the centre of town while I was searching for adults nearby. Happily, we soon found an adult too - so now I know how to get
marshalli on my year list even when I can't afford to travel!
I had expected today to be more of a reccie than a butterfly day but the weather was great - lots of sun, very warm, with cloudy spells - and the butterflies were brilliant. Best of all, of course, was
humedasae. Males and females were flying in excellent numbers. I got good underside pictures of males and females and reasonable uppersides of females. Unfortunately, the males were less obliging with uppersides and I only got one very poor shot - despite being dark, this species only ever showed the upperside in full sun and most of the amenable males were found during cloudy spells. Here's a random selection of shots:
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/humedasae30july2014m.jpg)
(ovipositing)
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/humedasae30july2014d.jpg)
(The only male upperside I photographed. It moved its wings as I clicked ...)
A poor picture of some eggs:
A great life tick!
Both
fagi and
hermione were flying. Most were easy to identify. Here are a definite
fagi and a definite
hermione:
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/fagi30july2014a.jpg)
(
fagi)
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/hermione30july2014a.jpg)
(
hermione)
A few more piccies from a great day:
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/lycaon30july2014b.jpg)
(female
lycaon)
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/lavatherae30july2014a.jpg)
(
lavatherae)
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/reducta30july2014a.jpg)
(
reducta)
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2014/icarus30july2014a.jpg)
(
icarus)
The day list wasn't huge but we weren't twitching and it was very satisfactory. Between us, this is what we saw (brackets indicate things I didn't see but Markus did):
Apollo, (scarce swallowtail), small white, green-veined white, wood white, (clouded yellow), Berger's clouded yellow, baton blue, blue-spot hairstreak, Chapman's blue, Escher's blue, Piedmont anomalous blue, geranium bronze, chalkhill blue, common blue, Adonis blue, damon blue, Meleager's blue, heath fritillary, silver-washed fritillary, knapweed fritillary, didyma, high brown fritillary (marbled fritillary), reducta, great sooty satyr, woodland grayling, large ringlet, speckled wood, wall, small heath, dusky meadow brown, meadow brown, marbled white, pearly heath, marbled skipper, rosy grizzled skipper, safflower skipper, large skipper, Essex skipper, Lulworth skipper.
Guy