Hi David. The butterflies are more visible now but it is feeling distinctly end-of-season. The recovery was too late for some ...
Minnie woke me at 03h30 on Thursday and I assumed she needed to do something so got up and took her outside. When I opened the front door of the building, a beautiful sight greeted me: Mars and Jupiter in conjunction in a perfectly clear sky. This photo doesn't do it justice at all, especially as for some reason both Mars and Aldebaran have lost their redness:
It's not obvious, but Uranus is also in the picture, to the right of the Pleiades. This key shows where:
And a view over Leysin, with the red light of the Grand Chamossaire on the right:
Minnie didn't seem to have needed anything urgent but I was happy to get the unexpected walk and went back to sleep afterwards!
The next (technically, the same) day - yesterday - I took Minnie up the Grand Chamossaire to see what Erebia were now flying there. As so often this year, little was on the wing altogether, but I got my first meolans of the year, as well as melampus, manto, aethiops and what I took in the field to be a very late medusa. This is the butterfly in question:
It was as big as meolans and its undersides were the same as its uppersides. Bit of a puzzler! Here it is with a Piedmont ringlet:
Common hawkers were zooming over a stagnant pool near the Petit Chamossaire and this black darter decided to use my backpack as its resting spot:
Cloud and rain today, sadly, as it is the first day of the annual 'Nuit des fées' festival, when the young and old of Leysin celebrate tiny, winged sprites of a non-butterfly nature!
Guy