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PART ONE
On Saturday 29th June I flew out of Stansted in the company of great friend and fellow enthusiast Bob Lambert and our respective wives. We were heading for a week in the Picos de Europa mountains of northern Spain, where I hoped to catch up with seven target species: Dusky Large Blue, Chapman's Ringlet, Lefebvre's Ringlet, Iberian Marbled White, Spanish Purple Hairstreak, Gavarnie Blue and Esper's Marbled White. Four of these would be life-ticks for me, and the other three would be "second-timers". Bob hoped to pick up about ten new species. The next few days were to provide quite a few "Eureka" moments...
We landed in Bilbao around three pm local time and set off on the long drive to our hotel in Tama, just outside Potes. Unfortunately, on the final part of our drive through the dramatic Hermida gorge, we hit a delay, as a motorcyclist had been involved in an accident on this notoriously dangerous route. We were stopped for almost an hour whilst the emergency services did their thing, but eventually by evening we had reached the delightful posada where we were to spend our first night. A good night's sleep was had by all, and we awoke to partake of a superb breakfast, which included the largest, stickiest and most tasty croissants I have ever encountered!

We couldn't get into the apartment where we were to spend the rest of the week until later on Sunday afternoon, so we took a stroll through the delightful town of Potes. Bob and I were itching to get a look at what butterflies were on the wing, and a small patch of rough grassland near a car park produced our first species. Here we found Short-tailed Blues, Long-tailed Blues, Mallow Skipper and Southern Brown Argus, amongst other species.
L.boeticus C.argiades A.cramera C.alceae

By mid-afternoon we were settled into the apartment, and were checking out the butterflies immediately surrounding our home base. It was pure luck that we had selected a villa that had a strong local population of Spanish Purple Hairstreak right on the doorstep! I had missed out on this species in Provence back in early June, due to the season out there running late, so it was a great pleasure to see these beauties up close. I had only ever seen one other Spanish Purple, many years ago. L.roboris

Later in the week, I was watching a female fluttering low down around the base of an Ash tree growing on the side of the river bank down from the villa. Bob went in for a closer look and found a small clutch of Spanish Purple Hairstreak eggs laid low down - they have a very distinctive shape: We found a few more eggs, all singles, on nearby Ash stems. The morning after finding these eggs, a group of workmen armed with strimmers showed up down at the river, and by the time we got home from our day trip on that occasion, the Ashes bearing the eggs had been destroyed. Survival is hard in the butterfly world...

Other hairstreaks were on the wing in the area, with False Ilex being by far the commonest. S.esculi S.esculi and L.roboris

Monday morning dawned dull and cloudy. I had it on good authority from Paul Browning that the weather on the Potes side of the Picos is often like this, but that the "other side", South West of the Puerto San Glorio, is often sunny. We decided to put this to the test, and drove up to the Puerto along an increasingly windy road. The cloud was getting thicker, visibility was down to just 20 metres, and the temperature had plummeted to a cool 12 degrees. Was this really good butterfly country? Puerto San Glorio was in cloud, and what should have been a spectacular viewpoint was instead very much a damp squib. We stopped anyway, and Bob managed to spot a solitary bedraggled Apollo roosting on a flower head. It was torpid, and had it been a warm-blooded creature would no doubt have been suffering from hypothermia.
We carried on past the Puerto, and as we began to lose a bit of altitude, the skies cleared, the temperature soared, and we found ourselves in full sunshine. Quite a remarkable and very welcome transition!
A suitable track and layby presented themselves, and as soon as we had pulled up, two enormous, dark Erebias took to the wing. We grabbed our cameras and dashed out to find Chapman's Ringlet, largest of the European Erebias and a life-tick for us all - Eureka indeed! habitat of Chapman's Ringlet E.palarica

With the sun still shining, we moved on further and turned off a side road to head a little further north, stopping at a fabulous alpine meadow area, where a multitude of Blues, Coppers and Fritillaries were on the wing. Our number one target for this area was the Dusky Large Blue, but we were right at the beginning of the flight period, and we didn't find any in a promising damp hollow, stuffed full of Sanguisorba. We decided to walk higher up the slopes, finding numerous fritillaries, Meadow, Knapweed, Small Pearl-bordered, Pearl-bordered, Marsh, Heath, Provencal and Dark Green, plus good numbers of Purple-edged Coppers. Blues included Common, Chapman's, Idas, Mazarine and Turquoise.
We had wandered for about half an hour, and were contemplating stopping for a picnic lunch, when all of a sudden a butterfly took to the wing right in front of me. It had the most incredible dark inky-blue colour as it flew up and around. It had to be...yep, another Eureka moment, my first ever Dusky Large Blue! What a beauty. P.nausithous Habitat of the Dusky Large Blue

Part two to follow shortly.

PART TWO
It was hard to leave the Dusky Large Blue site behind. We saw one further male, had lunch, and meandered for another hour or so, enjoying other species such as Turquoise Blue and Purple-edged Copper, the latter being very different to the ones that I am used to seeing in the French Alps. The males all had lovely purple edges to them and were quite beautiful. Lunch with Dusky Large Blues
P.dorylas
L.hippothoe

Mindful of the fact that we had a long and winding journey back to home base, we eventually tore ourselves away and returned to the hire car. But on the way back up to the Puerto San Glorio, a nice looking meadow/woodland area with a convenient lay-by forced another stop. There were "Marbled Whites" flying here, and given that we had two species of these on our hit list, stopping off for a look was a no-brainer. These Marbled Whites were very large, very white, and clearly not in the mood to sit still! After a lot of perseverence, we got close enough to confirm them as Esper's Marbled White, a life-tick for Bob and only the second time I had seen one. M.russiae

There were plenty of them at this lovely site, but I was also hoping to find Iberian Marbled White. It took a while, but finally I found a few in amongst the Esper's, and one eventually sat down and posed nicely. Another life-tick! M.lachesis

Many fritillaries were flying here also. Below are Lesser Marbled, Marsh and Knapweed. B.ino
E.aurinia
M.phoebe
Habitat of Esper's and Iberian Marbled White and many others.

There was a very attractive heath flying around in reasonable numbers. It's hard to know whether to call this a Chestnut Heath, a Spanish Heath, or a Spanish Chestnut Heath. Some authors give it specific status, whilst others have it as a sub-species, iphioides. C.glycerion ssp iphioides / C.iphioides

Purple-shot Copper was also present. L.alciphron

After filling our boots with photographs, we wound our way up and over, then down and around the mountainsides, back to base, where we celebrated with a fine dinner of delicious local chorizo, made into an onion/mushroom/pasta dish. This was accompanied by several bottles of remarkably decent Rioja, which had been purchased at the ridiculously cheap price of between 2 and 4 Euros per bottle. Whilst writing up the day's butterfly records and reviewing our photo's, Bob produced a picture on his camera of a very surprising looking copper. I was already well into my fourth glass of red by this point, so as he showed me his photo, I imagined that I had somehow teleported across to Greece, for there before me was a shot of what looked very much like a Grecian Copper! How could this be? Clearly I was missing something (mainly sobriety), and after a quick check of the books, it became clear that Bob had photographed the local form of Scarce Copper known as ssp miegii. I had completely missed it in the field, and had to wait for a return visit the following afternoon to see and photograph it for myself. It is quite a stunner! L.virgaureae ssp miegii

It had been one hell of a day! Three lifers for me , plus a couple of new local forms. What we now needed was a day of clear weather on the Potes side of the Picos so that we could head off to high limestone scree sites in pursuit of our remaining targets.
Part three to follow shortly.

PART THREE
We woke up to a cloudy start again on Tuesday, with no prospect of sunshine in the local forecast, so once again we drove south west, up and over the Puerto San Glorio, and then headed in a more northerly direction to the tiny settlement of Cain, at the start of the Cares gorge. Here, we turned into non-butterflying tourists and trekked along the stunning, and at times slightly scary, gorge walk. The scenery was dramatic. It was a very popular spot, and we really enjoyed the experience of seeing this part of Spain.

The weather changed for the better on Wednesday. Blue skies and hardly any cloud. At last it was time to take the road up to Fuente De, ascend the cable car, and seek out Gavarnie Blue and Lefebvre's Ringlets. We arrived at Fuente De behind two coaches that had just disgorged their contents of a large group of school children on a trip. The queue for the cable car was long, and the cars only hold 20 people, so we had a bit of a wait for the ascent, but it was worth it to drink in the views from the top.
Bob and I were soon mooching about on the limestone and grassy patches, seeking out our quarry. I had soon seen a single male Gavarnie Blue, but it had landed only briefly and then disappeared at pace over a rocky drop. Twenty minutes later and Bob was getting tense - he still hadn't seen one. We decided to rejoin the women-folk and walk a little further up the track to see if we had better luck further on. Bob and I had just walked past a small puddle, when my wife, who was behind us, called out "what is this blue here then?" We turned around, and sure enough, there on the floor was a gorgeous male Gavarnie Blue drinking up salts. Eureka! A.pyrenaicus ssp asturiensis

The undersides are sublime!
Habitat of Gavarnie Blue.

Further up near a large pond, we found more Gavarnie Blues, including some small groups of mud-puddlers. A.pyrenaicus ssp asturiensis
A.pyrenaicus and C.minimus

Higher still up the mountainside as scree began to dominate, we started to see some very dark ringlets on the wing. They were relentless in flight, patrolling up and down, and hardly ever stopping, but it was possible to get close enough to one or two to obtain a good impression of a dark Erebia with no orange markings and two small white ocelli. It had to be Lefebvre's Ringlet!
I consider myself extremely lucky to have managed to get close enough to one to get the following two record shots - they are poor, but at least they confirm what we were seeing: E.levebvrei

Once again, this is a local form, f.astur, associated with the Picos de Europa.
Habitat of Lefebvre's Ringlet.

The high altitude above Fuente De had done us proud, and we celebrated in the usual style that evening. We had now hit all of our target species. I had four lifers and shots of species that I had only ever seen singletons of before, Bob had ten life ticks, and we had both seen some fascinating local forms. All pressure was off!

Thursday was spent staying local, relaxing and not driving anywhere, other than the supermarket to replenish a few supplies.

I had the interesting sighting of a male False Ilex Hairstreak attempting to pair up with a female Spanish Purple Hairstreak: S.esculi and L.roboris

Discussion on Thursday evening turned to what we were going to do Friday, and whether we wanted to revisit any species or sites. Both Bob and I felt that although we had found two male Dusky Large Blues earlier in the week, we didn't feel as though we had experienced them in all their glory and ecological splendour. We decided that on Friday we would leave the ladies at the villa by the pool, and we would make one final excursion up and over the mountains, this time to visit an alternative potential site for Duskies.

So we set off early on Friday and reached the site in good time. It was looking good for fritillaries and some species of blue, but the only vaguely suitable Dusky Large Blue habitat appeared to be a very small area of damp grassland close to a large lake. The quantity of Sanguisorba was meagre, and it really didn't feel like a great site to find nausithous.

However, I did photograph the only Amanda's Blue of the holiday here. P.amandus

After an hour or so, Bob suggested we return to the site where we had seen the two male Duskys earlier in the week, and this turned out to be a great decision. A few days later and this site was performing very well. We had about 20 Dusky Large Blues in a smallish damp area not far from the road, and were able to watch females egg-laying and males patrolling over the habitat as they investigated every Burnet flowerhead in the vicinity, looking for a mate. Further up the hillside where we had seen the two males previously, there were upwards of 50 adults on the wing. It was possible to have four or five flying simultaneously in a single vista of a few square meters - fabulous stuff, all the more special as we were not on a nature reserve and could roam freely, but carefully, amongst them. We had the full Dusky Large Blue experience that day! P.nausithous

Saturday was spent once again relaxing locally, before our long journey home to Blighty on Sunday. What a fabulous week! Absolutely great butterfly action, great company, food, wine, scenery and plenty of good laughs along the way. The Picos of perfection!

Marvelous stuff Pete, I can feel the joy you felt with every new sighting . I for one would need a weeks holiday to recover from seeing so many new species, everyone you mentioned would be a lifer for me!

Thanks Bugboy - it was indeed a fabulous experience, and I have not yet come down to earth...

Phenomenal, Pete. I know you put the effort in before your trips so in all honesty these 'eureka' moments are well earned.

You always come up with surprises though, and that local form Scarce Copper I'll admit I'd never heard of. I was only telling my group today that this species never has forewing spots so going forward I need to be more careful!

Thanks David - phenomenal is the right word for it!

The research and planning processes for these trips, and the building anticipation beforehand, is all part of the pleasure for me, and I am sure for yourself and others also.

Then there is also the post-holiday joy of going through hundreds of photographs and records. I always think these butterfly trips give so much more value for money than any other form of holiday could ever do.

Next stop, the Montes Universales...

Great report and a most interesting read. And as for selecting a villa with a colony of Spanish Purple Hairstreaks alongside, stroke of genius!

Excellent report, Pete! So excellent, that I’ll stick a link to it on Dispar, where I try to gather useful things like this.

Cheers,

- Pete

essexbuzzard wrote:Great report and a most interesting read. And as for selecting a villa with a colony of Spanish Purple Hairstreaks alongside, stroke of genius!

Thanks Essex! Spanish Purples on the doorstep was a definite highlight, one of many over the course of the week!

Pete Eeles wrote:Excellent report, Pete! So excellent, that I’ll stick a link to it on Dispar, where I try to gather useful things like this.

Cheers,

- Pete

Thanks Pete! Glad you enjoyed it, and I shall be delighted for it to be linked on Dispar.

A great report Pete from an exciting and rewarding trip.
Chris

Thanks Chris - it was indeed a most rewarding experience! Hope all goes well down in the south of France.