I remembered you had spent time in
christi country, CC ... There are three or four valleys on the Swiss side and a couple on the Italian side where the butterfly flies and all are quite scary, as you say! Purple-shot, purple-edged (
eurydame), sooty and scarce copper fly throughout the region so you are forgiven for not knowing what the eggs were at first sight! All are beautiful butterflies.
Thank you for your comments too, Trevor and Goldie. Yes, there are just as many unusual and special creatures in the UK - just not of so many species. The danger in high density parts of the world is of becoming a superficial twitcher instead of really getting to know the butterflies. I try to get to know them but the twitcher is there inside me, too - probably inside all of us.
As decided on the spur of the moment yesterday, I set off for the Aosta Valley today to photograph Piedmont anomalous blue,
Polyommatus humedasae. Before heading to the dry grasslands where this species flies I had a quick look for geranium bronzes in Aosta itself. Sadly, they must have got in a different gardener since last year as there were very few geraniums around and no bronzes.
Tant pis.
Even before I reached 'the site' I saw a male
humedasae energetically defending a territory near a dung heap. This was the wrong side of the river, about half a kilometre as the crow flies from the usual spot, showing that the species may be local but it does disperse. I suspect it can be found in all suitable habitat in the region - but it has never managed to escape the Aosta Valley, presumably because too much Alpine terrain separates it from other suitable grassland. Once I reached the main
humedasae stretch I found the species was very numerous. Unfortunately, by this time the clouds had come over and it soon started to rain warm rain. A thunderstorm was brewing ... This did not stop the butterflies flying but it did stop them opening their wings. The temperature was in the high 30s and there was no sun so they all posed showing only their undersides. In the overcast conditions good pictures were difficult to take.
NEVERTHELESS, here are a few shots of
humedasae. In some of them you can see a faint hint of a 'damon' stripe. In others there is nothing at all.
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2015/humedasae17july2015f.jpg)
(this one is sheltering from the rain)
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2015/humedasae17july2015d.jpg)
(that one must have gone to bed on a crumpled pillowcase)
I took dozens but there's very little variation in this butterfly and not a lot in my pictures either!
This female was the only one that briefly opened her wings:
Damon blues were flying at the same site. Here are a male and a female:
This butterly is in the same subgenus,
Agrodiaetus, as the anomalous and furry blues. Escher's blue and Chapman's blue, although very different in appearance, are also in this subgenus. Both were in evidence today. No blues were settling with uppersides visible because of the weather, but if they had been the furry androconial patches would have been obvious in the males. Common (and Eros) blues lack these patches.
Another blue in evidence today was Meleager's -
Polyommatus daphnis. Here are a male and a female:
The commonest Satyrid was dusky meadow brown,
Hyponephele lycaon. Although this looks superficially rather like a meadow brown the females are instantly separable by the second black ocellus on the forewing:
In the field, however, as so often,
Hyponephele is immediately different from
Maniola, by size, habit, everything really. It is a shame most butterfly books focus so much on the 'still life' appearance of butterflies.
Almost the first butterfly I saw on arrival was a woodland grayling. I did get a single shot at this but I had the camera on ISO 100, for bright conditions, and it was totally overcast then, so the picture is rubbish. But it does confirm my 'eyebrow' method of separating woodland from rock. I knew this was woodland anyway because of its sheer size, and saw another later that was equally huge. But size is not apparent when you are asked to identify species from photos!
For the skippers, I saw Oberthür's, safflower, (southern) grizzled, large and small - I didn't check specifically for Essex as I was concentrating on other things. Here is a female safflower skipper:
And why not close with that most English of butterflies, the small heath?
I was lucky with the weather. When I got back to Aosta the heavens opened and a violent storm struck. Even more luckily, I had decided not to take my bike but to catch the bus back to Martigny. I couldn't have cycled home in that weather - and certainly not with a little dog-head sticking out of my backpack!
Guy