Thanks again, Wurzel and David. I think sage skippers are just red-heads.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
They are surprisingly lovely butterflies when you get a good view. As for
feisthamelii and
podalirius, yes, they do seem to be treated as separate species now, though not by all authorities. I know Lafranchis did a lot of research into the differences between them a few years back.
I spent almost the whole of today processing and uploading my pictures from the last couple of weeks - it does take a long time. One thing I learnt on returning to my books was that the Spanish subspecies of lesser spotted fritillary is now agreed to be a species in its own right -
Melitaea ignasiti. None of my pictures show that famous disco-cellular vein very brilliantly, as the butterflies were so restless I couldn't take any time to get a decent shot. This is about the best I got:
Unless an expert tells me otherwise, I take that to be definitive.
Another subspecies/form that some consider a species in its own right (Leraut, for example) is the southern European small heath,
lyllus. This is so different from ordinary
pamphilus I spent a lot of time trying to photograph it. The problem was, it was nearly always in deep shade. Nevertheless, these pictures make the differences obvious, even if they wouldn't win any prizes:
Not a separate species, but a distinct form, is the southern Spanish version of gatekeeper (
Pyronia tithonus):
That picture was taken in Córdoba. This next was taken in Aragón. The difference is striking:
There are, of course, two other distinct gatekeeper species in Spain - southern gatekeeper and Spanish gatekeeper:
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2017/cecilia21jul2017rd.jpg)
(Southern gatekeeper,
Pyronia cecilia)
![Image](http://www.guypadfield.com/images2017/bathseba14jul2017ra.jpg)
(Spanish gatekeeper,
Pyronia bathseba)
As I mentioned in a previous post, purple hairstreaks also appear in the far south in a different morph - ssp.
ibericus. It is very pale, with only vestigial orange markings:
That picture was also taken in deep shade, with flash.
I'll close with just a few more pictures that I haven't previously posted. The first shows Ripart's anomalous blue, Forster's furry blue and Escher's blue on a flowerhead. I had to steady the stem with my hand, unfortunately, as there was a breeze:
The next, from the same site (in Aragón) , shows, I think, what makes this one of my very favourite places in the world to sit and have a beer:
The blue in flight on the left is a Forster's furry blue. The others are Ripart's anomalous blue (including Agenjo's) and more Forster's furry blues.
This next is the northern Spanish form of Spanish chalkhill blue. It is less chalky-white than the southern forms (which I failed to find when I went down south - I've seen them in the past in the Sierra Nevada in July but I didn't get an opportunity to go there this year):
This is a dusky heath from North Spain:
Here are a couple of shots of a freshly emerged Cleopatra:
I saw my first rosy grizzled skippers outside Switzerland this holiday (in Switzerland they are essentially restricted to one site):
Interestingly, in Spain they lay on mallow rather than cinqfoil:
That's all for now! It's late ...
Guy