www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Thanks Buggy and Jack. There are certainly plenty of white wagtails at that site, usually going around in troops. I've just been lazy, and when I've seen them across the river, where the dippers swim, I've called them grey wagtails without even looking through binoculars. I photographed that one today and was quite confused - completely different from grey wagtail but without a black bib and with a yellowish face, so not what I expected of a white wagtail. This must be a first summer bird, I guess. Here's the front view:



You'll get Cynthia's frit one day, Buggy. The first one is the best ...

Guy

Found this good match via Google:

although that is a apparently a female White Wagtail. However, with most birds, juveniles look very much like adult females.

Jack

Thanks again, Jack. As I say, I've just been lazy. White wagtails are as common here as pied are in the UK and I see them pretty well every day. It's just that when I photographed that particular individual, in a place I've always assumed there to be grey wagtails, it looked quite different - with the yellowish head and no black bib. To me, it looks quite different from the image you have posted. It didn't look like any of the pictures of young wagtails in my book either. ANYWAY, I am quite sure you're right - it is this year's brood of white wagtail, not yet old enough to look like one. I must make a point of photographing the next grey wagtail I see to make sure I'm not dreaming!

I stayed local today. The first Arran browns were flying in the woods and a very friendly white admiral decided to land on my camera. Fortunately, I had my iPhone to hand:



I wish I'd thought of that when the large tortoiseshell landed on my shoulder the other day.

Guy

Fantastic shot Guy, love it Goldie

Thanks Goldie. It's amazing how good even the selfie-side camera is on the iPhone these days!

Today was a blues day - dusky and scarce large blue to be precise. I arrived at the site early - by about 09h30 - so I would have a chance of some upperside shots. It was overcast at the time but practically the first butterfly I saw was a dusky large blue stuck, as ever, to a greater burnet head:



This species flies a little later than scarce large blue and was distinctly less numerous - and fresher - today. I soon found a good patch of scarce large blues, though because they were in a marshy patch and the other side of a fence all my photos were taken on full zoom from some distance. It was very difficult getting any upperside shots without vegetation in the way but I got a handful of adequate ones, if not the brilliant photos I wanted! These are all scare large blues, and almost all taken in cloud:



















I saw little else, not only because I spent most of my time with the blues but also because it was generally overcast. This is a mazarine blue:



I was trying to string some of these into alcon blues and indeed have one very strong candidate - but no underside. I've never seen the marsh form/subspecies of alcon.

The site is near Gstaad, where I used to live, so I spent the afternoon drinking up the old sites (and beers) before heading home.

Guy

I take it that Swiss beer is most palatable? German, French, English beers are good but I cannot say the same for Scottish "Heavy" or "80 shillings". I was always amused how Scots living in England took to English beer with great enthusiasm.

Wine is now my drink of choice. I do NOT have sophisticated tastes. Sainsbury's Dry White plonk at £11.50 for 2.25 litre box mixed half-and-half with Cava - £5.50 per 0.75 litre bottle - even cheaper at Tesco (£5.00). My tastes are certainly not "refined" but at least my drink is cheaper than the bottled [tap?] water that my wife buys - bless her.

Jack

No, Swiss beer is not palatable, Jack! I dislike all lager in general but Swiss lager in particular. Too bad - I have to drink it.

Today I had to drink a lot of it (though I had a few cans of Löwenbräu too), as it was the hottest day of the year so far and I visited a very hot valley. As always on a Sunday, I had to be back early, but before then I enjoyed plenty of good species. Here is a selection:


(lesser purple emperor)


(Meleager's blue supping with common blues)


(spotted fritillaries with Meleager's blue, common blue, little blue, Provençal short-tailed blue, Amanda's blue, chalkhill blue, mazarine blue and wood white sp.)


(much the same group)


(marbled whites were quite keen to join in)


(olive skipper)


(red-underwing skippers)


(Grayling)


(mazarine blue)


(mazarine blue with baton blue)

I saw white admiral, southern white admiral, lesser purple emperor and purple emperor at that same site today, though the purple emperor was in flight and I couldn't be sure it wasn't lesser purple. It just happened to be big and flying into a dense sallow thicket. Amazingly though, as I arrived home at about 15h30 a male purple emperor flew out of my front garden, round me a couple of times, then off up the hill. I have sallows in my garden that are visited by females every August (without laying eggs so far as I can see) but this was my first male.

Guy

It's curious how that 'mud-puddling' behaviour is common in warmer regions but is rarely seen in Britain. I suppose butterflies here have less difficulty retaining moisture. I recall very similar scenes to those you have photographed in the Italian Alps (South Tyrol) around Merano.

An amazing collection of mud puddling Blues and others.
I saw some similar congregations in the Cevennes a couple of weeks ago.

Glorious stuff, Guy! You just can't beat a group of puddling butterflies. There are few things I enjoy more than just quietly kneeling down and identifying them from left to right as they sit there barely moving (except for their probosces, that is!)

Thanks Mike, Trevor and David. The puddling phenomenon does seem to be a function of the heat. It happens increasingly as the day gets hotter - and I don't think I've ever experienced yesterday's intense heat in the UK. It might also depend on the substrate - the Jurassic limestone of the Alps is very different from the sandy heaths of East Anglia. That said, some of the biggest congregations occur not on the ground but on scattered horse dung along woodland rides.

It rained much of today but was briefly and unexpectedly sunny during our afternoon walk in the woods. Immediately, a white admiral flew, then another, so I decided to go back to the sallows where I had been watching the purple emperor caterpillars. A male purple emperor - my second of the year - swooped briefly over the path, then settled a moment on a tree before zooming off over the forest. I wondered if it was someone I knew - or even, perhaps, if he knew me ... I'll have to go back on the next sunny morning.

Guy

The Mazarine Blue by the rock is really beautiful.

I got my first 'proper' butterfly books as a seven-year old: Ford and then South. I was a very reasonable reader by then but lacked some of the finer skills.
For a long time, Mazarine Blue was Margarine Blue.

In fact mazarine is a very rare word and I have never heard it used other than in connection with the butterfly. This link, especially the word usage trend, is quite interesting

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictio ... h/mazarine

I have only just come across collinsdictionary.com and the word usage trend can be investigated for most words and shows how particular words ebb and flow in terms of popularity.

Jack

The margarine blue? Is that the same thing as the I can't believe it's not butterfly?

After a few days of rain the sun returned today. Minnie and I set off for the Jura Vaudois to see chestnut heaths. This butterfly is much scarcer in Switzerlad than the books suggest and doesn't seem to fly anywhere near me. I last saw it in 2013. At the same site in the Jura, but in an area closed off to the public, large heaths fly - or flew. It looked as if they were on the way to extinction and I don't know the present status. I kept my eyes open today in case any should wander off the edges of their private domain but saw none.

I did see a lot of chestnut heaths. This butterfly is the size of a large small heath. It is very variable in terms of the hindwing ocelli but the white splashes are distinctive and make it easy to identify. In flight some individuals really do look very chestnut.

The grass was long and the butterflies were mostly staying low so it was difficult to get shots without stems or their shadows obscuring part of the picture. Here are a few different individuals, showing the range of variation at just this one site:








(one of the really chestnut ones)







For comparison, here is a small heath at the same site today:



Another species we don't have in my part of Switzerland is small pearl-bordered fritillary. I always keep my eyes peeled for this when I go to the Jura and thought I was in luck today when a bright, smallish Boloria flew past. But as soon as it landed I realised it was a cranberry fritillary:



That was the only one I saw. Their real home must be deeper in the inaccessible parts of the reserve. Moorland clouded yellows, which share the same foodplant as cranberry fritillary, were also to be seen within the reserve, very occasionally flying closer to the edges.

Remarkably little else was flying. The only Lycaenids I saw were two common blues, in widely separated locations. Lesser marbled and false heath fritillaries were locally common and there were a few heath fritillaries too. In the woods, as I walked to and from the site (it's about 6 km from the station to the marsh) I saw silver-washed fritillaries too, and a few whites, but really very little else. The commonest species by far was ringlet, which was flying in good numbers everywhere. There are four in this picture, with a chestnut heath thrown in too for good measure:



Guy

Guy,
I have been enjoying catching up with your diary. Those pictures of the blues mud puddling are fantastic. It is amazing to see so many species in close proximity.

Thanks Nick. I think you share my love of Lycaenids! All so superficially similar, all so different in their finely adapted ways.

I stayed at home today, taking just the usual dog walk to the woods. It was sunny and I hoped for purple emperors but they didn't appear. I've seen two locally so far - and that's already more than I saw last year I think. The females lay in the rides where I walk but the males no longer play there, perhaps because what was their master tree, died of some strange disease a couple of years ago. Instead, I saw my first adult white-letter hairstreaks of the year. They were all males, indulging, I hope, in a little post-coital nectaring. The species has declined in my woods recently and needs a bit of a boost.









Later in the day I had a lifer. Not a butterfly but a mammal. Minnie was obviously very excited about something in the kitchen and I assumed it was a mouse - I share my house willingly with a lot of mice. I accept that Minnie controls their numbers but I don't really like her doing it when I'm present as I always feel I should have done something to save the little creature's life. Anyway, this time it wasn't a true mouse but what Minnie likes to call an edible dormouse - a name dating back to the Roman habit of keeping them in jars and eating them. As a vegan, I prefer the alternative name, fat dormouse, or the Latin, Glis glis (though admittedly, that does hark back to the barbaric Romans). I didn't see it while Minnie was all in a state but later, when it thought it was safe and came out of hiding. First, I tried to catch it in my butterfly net (which works for bats and small birds) - but instead of falling in as planned it ran nimbly around the rim and then leapt off. So I opened the kitchen window, closed the door and left it to get out on its own.



What a cutie, eh? It goes without saying I took the picture without flash - hence the soft edges. I would never use flash with a nocturnal creature like that.

Guy

What a house guest? I had no idea you get them in those mountains, never seen one in the wild. Great picture!

A great houseguest, Buzzard - but I hope he's left ... He doesn't belong in here with Minnie!

Up to the Aosta Valley today, for Piedmont anomalous blue, Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) humedasae, a now annual pilgrimage. I'll post in haste, as I have to go out again tonight and be off early tomorrow morning.


(humedasae with Escher's blue and Meleager's blue)


(mating pair of humedasae)


(no chance of an upperside in today's intense heat)


(female great sooty satyr)


(the only shot I got of fagi, though there were a lot around!)


(hermione)


(blue-spot hairstreak has been my jinx for the last few years - I just can't get a decent shot! I only saw two today and they weren't posing)


(dusky meadow Brown)


(pale clouded yellow, hyale)


(Damon blue)


(Minnie slept in the shade while I looked for butterflies)



Guy

Great series of images there , Guy. For once,we actually had the same weather as you today! Minnie looks quite content,too!

Wow more fantastic species Guy I've not really seen Mud puddling over here - despite having plenty of mud - is it because we don't have the species or because of the climate or have I just been in the wrong place at the right time?

Have a goodun

Wurzel

Wrong kind of mud?

Thanks Buzzard and Wurzel.

I forgot to mention that I had an hour to spare in Aosta itself, waiting for a bus, so went on a geranium bronze wander. Aosta is like a Mediterranean town, with narrow, shaded Streets, and at that stage in the morning most of the Pegargonium plants were out of the sun. But I did manage to find this individual, lurking behind an empty table (lucky for me it was empty - you can get arrested for that sort of thing):





Guy