Aberrant high brown fritillary
Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2023 6:52 pm
It's not often a butterfly flies past and I simply have no idea what it is! It happened this afternoon, up my local mountain (at a little over 1800m), so I gave chase and snapped a very few quick shots before it disappeared. I did realise, when it settled, that it was a female high brown fritillary, but she was so aberrant she looked more like an escape from a butterfly farm in flight:
For any conspiracy theorists, yes, that piccie has been a little clumsily manipulated, but only because it was windy and the original photo just clipped the tip of the wing. This is what came out of my camera:
She was large, and when I first realised she was a fritillary, I assumed she was dark green. But the underside - an equally awful shot - shows she is high brown:
She was highly mobile and flew off before I could get any better pictures.
We are in mid-heatwave here in Switzerland, and she is fresh, so perhaps this form was produced by the exceptional temperatures.
Guy
For any conspiracy theorists, yes, that piccie has been a little clumsily manipulated, but only because it was windy and the original photo just clipped the tip of the wing. This is what came out of my camera:
She was large, and when I first realised she was a fritillary, I assumed she was dark green. But the underside - an equally awful shot - shows she is high brown:
She was highly mobile and flew off before I could get any better pictures.
We are in mid-heatwave here in Switzerland, and she is fresh, so perhaps this form was produced by the exceptional temperatures.
Guy
