www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Here are a few snaps which my son took on the Eastern side of the Pyrenees (near Andorra) recently. Again, it would be good to know what they were.
Our guesses:

1 ?
2 Apollo
3 Small Pearl Bordered Frit
4 Scarce Copper
5 Small copper (looks very hairy?? and quite a wide black margin on upper wings?)
6 underside of 5
7 Arran brown
8 Scotch Argus?










Help much appreciated.

Cheers,

Trev

Hi Trev - my guesses would be:

1 Silver-studded Blue (male) (but possibly Mazarine!)
2 Apollo
3 Weaver's (Violet) Fritillary
4 Scarce Copper (male)
5 Small Copper (they're much darker on the continent)
6 Small Copper
7 Arran Brown
8 Scotch Argus

Cheers,

- Pete

I've got to leave the house in exactly 2 minutes (!) to get brown hairstreaks, so here's my instant verdict, for your perusal:

1 According to my criteria in the Alps, that is idas, not silver-stud...
2 Apollo
3 Pearl-bordered fritillary
4 Scarce Copper (male)
5 Small Copper (they're much darker on the continent)
6 Small Copper
7 Large ringlet (E. euryale)
8 Piedmont ringlet (E. meolans)

Must fly. It's looking a bit cloudy, though...


Guy

Guy,
The fritillary seems to have quite a lot of white markings on the underside hind wing - hence my guess at small pearl bordered, rather than pearl bordered? Pete's guess at Weaver's is interesting too, but I thought I read somewhere that they don't occur at altitudes of over 1000m... this one was considerably higher than that!?
Does that give any extra clues to aid identification I wonder?

PS: Guy... Not sure about your reference to the Alps... this was the Pyrenees. Apologies if the sudden synchronised, but widespread, migration of my two (usually sedentary) children over the past few weeks has confused you. You can imagine what it was like for the parents

Trev

Hi,

Sorry if my phrasing was confusing - I read and replied to your post in under 60 secs, even copying and pasting Pete's IDs (before emending them!! ).

For the blue, what I meant was that by Alpine criteria this is undoubtedly idas blue. HOWEVER, both silver-studded and idas have many subspecies and varieties and the criteria I have established out here may not apply universally. Thus, I was implying some doubt. Nevertheless, I do think this is idas blue and think you can safely put this in your records!

For the fritillary, the underside is not a good guide in general (unless it is seen very well), though this underside immediately made me think of pearl-bordered and not small pearl-bordered. The upperside is a far better bet - in this case as showing through the underside!! It is manifestly pearl-bordered - macular, with triangles rather than crescents and with the pd spots aligned as for pearl-bordered, not small. Violet frit (sorry - Weaver's) flies at least up to 1500m (it is the commonest spring fritillary in my garden, at 1280m) but this is not one!!

The weather stood between me and brown hairstreak today but I did get grayling (semele), another of my target species. And the sun briefly shone at one of my blues sites, where I was able to photograph short-tailed, Provençal short-tailed, baton, damon, common, Adonis and Chapman's. Plenty of time for brown hairstreaks!!

Guy

Guy's IDs look good to me, & relate well to what I saw over there a few weeks ago. PS... not trying to ingratiate myself Guy

My 16-year old son (Matt) is very appreciative of your identification skills ...
He has to write a report which includes details of the wildlife he saw and without the skills on display on this forum, he/we would have taken the easy way out and plumped for some species which are definitely wrong. Now, there is a MUCH higher chance they are correct.

Cheers,

Trev

PS: Finally.... Sorry for a non-butterfly image, but anyone know what kind of beetle this is?



Trev

I'm out of my depth there - sorry! I'm pretty sure I took a photo of the same species in the Val one year but I never looked it up. Some kind of a ground beetle? Rest assured, someone on UK Butts knows what it is!

Guy