I got back this morning and after giving the dog a good walk thought I'd post a report
just in case anyone fancies joining me next year. A few people had the idea of coming this year but in the end it didn't work out for anyone. I know several others of you were in the Pyrenees this July so I'd be interested to hear how you got on too, and compare notes.
It is a late year in the Pyrenees. Cool weather and a lot of rain, together with some persistent snow (I've never seen so much snow at altitude as this year) seem to have pushed back the season. Thus, I saw only fresh males of some species and others were surprisingly scarce. I also saw a lot of typically earlier species, like sloe hairstreak. I was lucky with the weather this week. I had seven full days in the Val, of which just one and a half were sabotaged by cloud - unfortunately including my high blues trip. My high
Erebia trip had good weather.
SO: First the special Pyrenean species.
False dewy ringlet (
Erebia sthennyo) was common locally at altitude. In the Alps, dewy ringlet is an early species and peaked the week before I left. False dewy seemed about at peak in the Pyrenees when I was there. This is an incredibly annoying species to photograph (with a compact) because you don't see it until it flies and then it drifts aimlessly 50-100m before dropping down again, and then takes off again just as you get there.
Lefebvre's ringlet (
Erebia lefebvrei) was represented by a few very fresh males - no females. It lives on scree slopes and is even harder to photograph because the habitat is so easy to disrupt by scrabbling over it. But unlike
sthennyo it does come to nectar. These are not good pictures but it is a really super butterfly.
Pyrenees brassy ringlet (
Erebia hispania rondui) also seemed to be just coming onto the wing and I only saw a handful.
There were plenty of other
Erebia species of course and I can't put photos of everything, but the predominant one everywhere was Piedmont ringlet (
E. meolans).
Here is the Pyrenean form of the large blue which I suspect might lurk behind reports of scarce large blue:
The underside is unmistakeable, though:
I saw over 90 species in total so here's just a handful of others to whet the appetite:
(Woodland grayling -
Hipparchia fagi)
(Yes, the empire reaches the Pyrenees!)
(Provence orange tip -
Anthocharis euphenoides)
(Sloe hairstreak -
Satyrium acaciae)
(Purple-shot copper -
Lycaena alciphron gordius)
(Tufted marbled skipper -
Carcharodus flocciferus)
(Turquoise blue -
Plebicula dorylas)
(Knapweed fritillary -
Melitaea phoebe occitanica)
(Oberthür's grizzled skipper -
Pyrgus armoricanus)
... I could go on and on but I won't!
All to the continual circling of short-toed eagles (at low altitudes) and vultures (at high altitudes):
(Lammergeier)
(Griffon)
I also ran into a troop of wild boar in the woods and had a tantalisingly brief view of a pine marten scuttling along a track, just too fast for me to get the camera on it properly:
(That's a pine marten's tail, I promise!).
Guy
). I've been there so many times I don't expect any real surprises in terms of species (that's the thing about surprises - you don't expect them) but I do have some Pyrgus to work on and I still hope to find a hitherto unnoticed colony of Gavarnie blue and perhaps confirm the presence of scarce large blue in the Val (Tolman mentions it as unconfirmed - and I suspect it may be a case of mistaken identity as the large blues in the sanguisorbe meadows there look from the upperside just like female scarce large blues).
