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The third day turned out to be probably the biggest disappointment of the whole trip. David had read about the Gave du Marcadau being full of flowers. So, after the highly grazed meadows of the previous two days, we were hoping for many more butterflies.

We parked at another vast car park near Pont d’Espagne, and made our way through the woods and past the impressive waterfall. Large Ringlet (Erebia euryale) were seen in large numbers in the forest clearings, and a few tatty White Admiral (Limenitis camilla) were also seen. However, despite walking quite a way up the valley, we were once again depressed to find that the meadows had been grazed to within an inch of their lives. There was one small section, with extreme slopes near the river, that had been grazed much less due to the inaccessibility. Here, butterflies were profuse, and the highlight turned out to be our only Geranium Argus (Eumedonia eumedon) of the week, which very much appeared to be close to the end of its life. Also seen were Large Grizzled Skipper (Pyrgus alveus), Silver Spotted Skipper (Hesperia comma), Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius), Green Underside Blue (Glaucopsyche alexis), Meadow Fritillary (Melitaea parthenoides) and Pearly Heath (Coenonympha arcania). To try and find different species, and in the vague hope of less grazing, I made a very steep climb up the south facing slope. It was still heavily grazed sadly, albeit I spotted our first and only Grayling species of the week, a Rock Grayling (Hipparchia hermione). In the afternoon we moved on to a spot near the Cirque de Troumouse, where False Dewy Ringlet had been seen historically. Again, the meadows had been grazed to within an inch of their lives. It was very hot and the small number of Erebia we did see were highly active, making it a high frustrating pursuit! At one point, from a distance I thought I was in luck, but with a photograph it turned out just to be Mountain Ringlet, not False Dewy Ringlet. Following an extensive search in two spots, we gave up as a bad job, concluding that the early season meant we were too late for False Dewy Ringlet this year.

The frustrating day meant we saw just 37 species, albeit 9 were new species for the week.

If the third day had been the most disappointing, the fourth day turned out to be a pleasant surprise. More in hope than judgement, we drove to the Gave d’Ossoue, and were delighted to find flowering meadows the whole length of the valley. It looked as though it hadn’t been grazed at all! We spent most of the day at various points in the valley and made the most of the large number of individual butterflies, probably the highest density all week. New species for the week included Berger’s Clouded Yellow (Colias alfacariensis), Escher’s Blue (Polyommatus escheri), Chapman’s Blue (Polyommatus thersites) and Knapweed Fritillary (Melitaea phoebe). It was in this valley where we bumped into Pete Smith, a fellow UK Butterflyer – it’s a small world! Pete pretty much confirmed our suspicions that the early season meant we were too late for False Dewy Ringlet. He’d seen some tatty individuals further east over a week earlier.

Apollo's were profuse. I've seen them in many places in Europe, but I'd say that there were more in this valley than I've seen anywhere else in Europe. On the way back to the hotel, much lower down the valley, we stopped by the river near to the village of Prechac. We had been eyeing this spot up all week, as there was a profusion of Sallow, which made us wonder whether Purple Emperor and Lesser Purple Emperor would be seen.

It was scorching hot at this low altitude though, around 35C! This made butterflying extremely arduous, and it brought back memories of my trip to Cyprus the previous July. It was so hot, most of the butterflies seemed to be sheltering. But the lower altitude did mean we saw three species not seen at any other point during the week, namely Short Tailed Blue (Cupido argiades), Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus), Gatekeeper (Pyronia Tithonus).

We retired to the hotel, for much needed refreshments!

Day 5 was a repeat of Day 2, but in reverse order. The aim once again was to try find Water Ringlet and Lefebrve’s Ringlet.

So, in the morning, we returned to the vast car park at Regie Intercommunale du Tourmalet, and walked down the nearby valley. This time I walked down the other side of the river, and spent a full morning examining literally every individual Erebia I saw. To no avail on the Erebia front.

Had I been on my own, I’d have missed out on Water Ringlet (Erebia pronoe). However, David walked further up the valley, and back down the other side, rewarded by seeing two or three Water Ringlet. He kindly pointed me in the right direction, and when I saw one, it was clearly very different to all the other Erebia seen in the week, both in terms of its very different underside markings, and in terms of its behaviour of settling in Scabious flowers. I’d seen a very worn and tatty Water Ringlet in the high Dolomites in September 2019, but this fresh individual was a good find. In the afternoon, we returned to the Col du Tourmalet, and retraced our steps on the track we’d walked three days earlier. There were even more Erebia flying up and down the steep slopes today, and again they proved frustrating to identify. Despite four pairs of eyes, and extensive searching, we had no confirmed sightings of Lefebvre’s Ringlet (Erebia lefebvre). The highlight was this female Gavarnie Ringlet (Erebia gorgone). We’d seen males of this species on nearly every day, but this was our first and only confirmed female of the week.

Day 6 was our final full day. With no new sites worth exploring, we voted to return to the flowery meadows of Gave d’Ossoue, exploring areas we’d not walked two days earlier. Again, we did a lot of extensive searching. In particular, I focused on some of the steep scree slopes, hoping to find Lefebvre’s Ringlet. No luck!

Oddly enough, we did see five new species for the week, namely Green Veined White (Pieris Napi), Bath White (Pontia Daplidice), Blue Spot Hairstreak (Satyrium spini), Niobe Fritillary (Argynnis niobe) and Heath Fritillary (Melitaea athalia).

At a puddling site on the track, we were rewarded with our best views of the week of Gavarnie Blue (Agriades pyrenaicus) and Pyrenees Brassy Ringlet (Erebia rondoui). With the record heatwave in Europe that week, even at high altitudes, the temperature was above 30C, so we made our way back down the valley for refreshments at a bar in the village of Gavarnie-Gedre. The terrace to the rear was full of nectar rich plants such as lavender, and overlooked a waterfall and some elm trees. We must have seen around 20 species of butterfly here, including Large White (Pieris brassicae), White Letter Hairstreak (Satyrium w-album) and Comma (Polygonia c-album), three further new species for the week.

On the drive back to the hotel, the temperature outside the car hit this height of 43C.

Day 7 dawned grey and muggy. In fact it was the first real cloud of the whole week. David's flight was early that afternoon, whereas Andrew and I had been messed around with cancelled British Airways flights two weeks prior to flying out, so we had an extra overnight in a Toulouse airport hotel. John, on the otherhand, had a long drive to the Italian Alps, with the Piedmont Anomalous Blue as a target!

We said goodbye to John, after a classically French 30 minute checkout from the hotel (!!!), and David drove the two hours to Toulouse. There were actually spots of drizzle in a number of places on the way.

Arriving at our hotel at Toulouse airport, it was still muggy and grey, and I said goodbye to David. With a whole afternoon to spare, I didn't want to waste it, so I walked 20 minutes to the east to the Grand Parc Garonne, near the River Garonne. It is actually a flood management area, but was surprisingly rich in butterflies. In the two hours I spent walking, I racked up 20 species, including another 8 new species for the week, including Mallow Skipper (Carcharodus alceae), Grizzled Skipper (Pyrgus malvae), Southern Small White (Pieris mannii), Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas), Brown Argus (Aricia agestis), Glanville Fritillary (Melitaea cinxia), Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria), Southern Gatekeeper (Pyronia cecilia). By that time the clouds had all burnt away, and it reached 40C. I was wilting, and retired to a restaurant for a very late lunch.

Despite missing out on two target species for the week, my personally species count was 93 species. The early season had thwarted us from seeing False Dewy Ringlet, which was the main disappointment. However, probably the bigger disappointment was the huge extent of the overgrazing, in nearly all areas.

Having visited the Spanish side of Pyrenees with Naturetrek at roughly the same time of year in 2017, in pretty much the same section of the Pyrenees, they were much less grazed. So I wonder whether it is worth targeting the same special species on that side of the border, rather than the French side.

All that said, we were unbelievably lucky with the good weather. I was expecting at least one day ruined by rain, but it was near cloudless the whole week.

Day 7 - Addendum

I stopped for lunch at the most amazing little restaurant, and spent a good two hours enjoying some extremely fine food for unbelievably cheap prices. Not just the food was perfect, but the view was lovely too. It gave me a chance to reflect on the previous four months. I'd managed to squeeze five separate butterfly spotting trips into that time, to Tenerife, Greece, Sicily and the French Pyrenees twice. The start of the season in mid-March had been marked by worries about how the Ukraine war would impact on travel. Then the BA.2 Omicron wave caused chaos at the airports in April in particular. The European weather this year has been crazy, with late seasons (and landslides) in Sicily and parts of Greece, but significant early seasons in southern France.

Despite the messed up seasons and (at times) poor weather, the five trips had yielded 24 new species for me. Yes some frustrated misses, but the frustrations only make the ones seen sweeter. And they provide incentive to visit again sometime. More generally, after the Covid blighted previous two years, and with the cost of living crisis starting to bite, I feel lucky in the extreme to have had such a wonderful set of holidays in 2022.

With 182 European species still to see, around 40% of the European total, there are many more years of butterflying to come (hopefully).

My Lord, you don't mess about when you get going, Paul.

Great round-up and, unsurprisingly, I concur with everything you've said - overgrazing is approaching satanic proportions in this region! As I joked to you one day, it's almost enough to make me turn vegetarian in order that there is less demand for these animals that are literally causing terminal havoc on the medium/high slopes of these mountains.

Apart from Vallée d'Ossoue and that roadside track below Lac des Gloriettes, every single site we visited was adversely affected by this obsession we humans have with over-populating lush, green slopes with large herbivores.

No wonder we are losing insects in the tens of millions. We deserve our inevitable fate.

David M wrote: ↑Mon Aug 29, 2022 8:05 pm My Lord, you don't mess about when you get going, Paul.

Great round-up and, unsurprisingly, I concur with everything you've said - overgrazing is approaching satanic proportions in this region! As I joked to you one day, it's almost enough to make me turn vegetarian in order that there is less demand for these animals that are literally causing terminal havoc on the medium/high slopes of these mountains.

Apart from Vallée d'Ossoue and that roadside track below Lac des Gloriettes, every single site we visited was adversely affected by this obsession we humans have with over-populating lush, green slopes with large herbivores.

No wonder we are losing insects in the tens of millions. We deserve our inevitable fate.

Indeed David. There were some sites we visited that were so overgrazed that they reminded me of various "green deserts" in the UK - the Lake District for example! And whilst I agree that it would be great if we could all consider eating less meat, with many parts of the world discovering their taste for red meat as they become wealthier, I fear the butterflies don't stand a chance.

Good point, Paul. Whilst there are more people opting for vegetarianism, those numbers are swallowed up by the general progressive increase in the global population.

In spite of all these 'green' platitudes, I think that things are getting worse, not better. I dread to think what kind of returns trips abroad for butterflies will provide in 30 years time.

David M wrote: ↑Wed Aug 31, 2022 2:17 pm Good point, Paul. Whilst there are more people opting for vegetarianism, those numbers are swallowed up by the general progressive increase in the global population.

In spite of all these 'green' platitudes, I think that things are getting worse, not better. I dread to think what kind of returns trips abroad for butterflies will provide in 30 years time.

I fear the same David. Let's make the most over the next 10 to 15 years, while we still can!

Hi Paul
Realy nice to read your repport from the trip, yes I had a long drive to Aosta valley in Italy, but i got the target : Piedmont Anomalous Blue

Excellent photos John, particularly that first one with the hint of iridescence. So very glad you found them. Were they in good numbers?

No Paul, not in good numbers, every thing was dried out, so there wasn’t that many flowers so between 10-12 that was all

Oh wow! Well 10-12 is better than none! But I can imagine the drought conditions not being good for them

John Vergo wrote: ↑Sat Sep 03, 2022 6:01 pm..i got the target : Piedmont Anomalous Blue

Excellent work, John. Nice to see what it looks like. There aren't too many images of that butterfly floating around.

Photographic Discoveries and planning for 2023

One of the things I find myself doing at this time of year is looking through all the photos I took earlier in more detail, making sure I got my identification correct first time round. Back in July, Andrew who was with me in Greece in April told me that one of the "Large Tortoiseshell's" he'd photographed had ended up being a Yellow Legged Tortoiseshell (Nymphalis xanthomelas). He had three excellent photos to prove it!

I'm not sure why I didn't check at the time, but yesterday I was looking through my Greek photos and came across this one. Apologies for the appalling quality, it was an initial record shot, ahead of creeping closer. But the individual butterfly flew away, and didn't return. The yellow legs are distinctive, and the edges of the wings seem "pointier" too, which also seems to be an identifying feature. In a text conversation with Andrew today, I now remember him pointing this individual butterfly out to me, which he had been chasing for 5 minutes. So it was the same individual he took photos of much better quality, confirming it was indeed Yellow Legged Tortoiseshell. So that's another 0.3% of the European species list seen!

Anyhow, another thing I find myself doing at this time of year is planning my trips for the following spring and summer. On the five trips planned I have a good chance of seeing between 30 and 40 new species in some very special places, two of the trips being relatively exploratory.

I'm sure many others of you reading this will be doing similar reviewing of photos and planning for next year too. Here's to 2023!

Winter does provide an opportunity to catch up on things, Paul. Always pays to take a second look at one's images from the season. Certainly looks to have paid off in this instance for you.

The third week of January saw me take my first holiday of the year, to Lanzarote. It wasn’t a butterfly focused trip, instead focused on some much-needed rest and relaxation. However, I did manage to fit in a couple of hours of butterflying over the course of six days. My main observation was just how different the butterflies were this year, compared to exactly the same week in 2019. In 2019, I was delighted to find Greenish Black-Tip (Euchloe charlonia) in good numbers, in some barren habitat just to the south west of Arrecife where I stayed. This year, however, despite extensive searching of the same location, I saw none. 2019 also saw large numbers of Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), which was my first hint that 2019 was going to be a “Painted Lady year” across Europe. While I did see two individuals this year, it wasn’t anywhere near the 100+ in 2019.

This year, however, Clouded Yellow (Colias crocea) were in huge numbers, by far the most common butterfly, yet I saw none in 2019.

I can only speculate that the differences in the butterflies relate to different weather in the preceding months. Early November 2018 saw quite a wet spell (for Lanzarote), followed by a bit more rain in mid-December 2018. Whereas November 2022 saw no rain, with one day of rain in early December 2022. As a consequence, I suspect the Greenish Black-Tips haven’t yet emerged this year. At least that is what I’m speculating, as an amateur.

Anyhow, my species list for this years trip totalled 7 species, namely:
Small White (Pieris rapae)
Clouded Yellow (Colias crocea)
African Grass Blue (Zizeeria knysna)
Southern Blue (Polyommatus celina)
Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)
Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)
Monarch (Danaus plexippus)

I was most pleased to get good views (and photos) of an African Grass Blue upperside on a cloudy day, something I’d not been able to achieve before. I had been hoping against hope to see African Migrant (Catopsilia florella). Despite finding a good stand of its larval host plant Cassia, there was no sign of larval feeding damage, nor any sign of any adults. It isn’t often seen on Lanzarote, so it was unlikely. This was only my second ever sighting of Southern Blue (Polyommatus celina), having seen it only for the first time in Sicily last year. I was happy to see this lovely Great Grey Shrike too. So that is my butterflying year begun. No sign of any so far this year in Sheffield, despite the mild weather. Bring on March and beyond!

I daresay you are right regarding the lack of rain being responsible for the absence of Greenish Black Tip, Paul. Still, that doesn't explain the abnormally high numbers of Clouded Yellows.

Where did you see the Monarch(s)?

Do you think the Clouded Yellow's were migrants from Morocco, David? Or even potentially a "Clouded Yellow" year brewing?

I only saw the one very tatty Monarch. It was just on the western edge of Arrecife, by the abandoned "Disco Lanzarote" building.