I counted 629 butterflies overall during 8th transectual mapping. The winner was
icarus (230), followed by
pamphilus (163) and
jurtina (116). Three
Lycaena dispar imagos.
To vary work and fun, I packed off into the mountains with no clap-net but only the camera.
Here's the proof I meant my last post seriously. Women are a very capable flower-holders and water carriers indeed
Dusky Large Blues (Duskies!) were reasonably numerous in some damper valley meadows.
Same situation with the
Scarce Large Blues, of course. This might be the only female that actually wasn't either ovipositioning or mating.
I find this
Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary photo very psychedelic
Totally fresh
High Brown Fritillary is such a rarity in early August.
This should be a biotope of three important species -
Large Blue, reputedly having a very weak year,
Niobe Fritillary and
Scotch Argus that I unfortunately photographed not only in bad quality but even atrocious one.
Then I returned to exploring some faunistic squares in the lowland (in a slightly hardcore mode with no breakfast, lunch and dinner pauses).
Regarding "closely watched species", I found
dispar in four squares,
nausithous to settle three of five (the work isn't yet finished) and
teleius in the only one.
Daplidice,
antiopa,
selene,
dia or
decoloratus were much harder to find.
Short-tailed Blue, one of the commonest, ever-present speices during this nice and hot year.
The
Six-spot Burnet were found rather locally. This is not evening but morning photo from the top edge of the clay pit.
Wistful Duskies, the species I'm sometimes afraid of. Typically unable to survive in open meadows, but this one was wisely managed by a very friendly owner.
An infamous clay pit bed. The idiot, who tried to wade through the stinky ooze on the right of the water, was me.
Worn wings, a true result of a very tough way of defending the
Large Copper territory. I've seen up to 10 of them feeding on various flowers (they seem to prefer violet/purple color), more normal are 3 or 4 animals per visit, though.
Since they last year's spots literally ended up under the hooves of cattle, they looked round for a new ones. Eg. along this electric fence.
This photo pretty much represents how the
Dusky Large Blue biotopes sometimes look like.
Compilation of botchy photos to be posted later, see you Britons
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)