www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I just spent an interesting week in Austria. Most of it was in Mallnitz, but a couple of nights near Salzburg too with walking trips to Germany. The number of butterflies was amazing, but the gorgeous weather made photography difficult - the subjects didn't want to stop at all...

Here are a couple of group shots for the experts. I'll group others in separate threads as there will be quite many of them.

So, what do you see?

In both pictures I see alberganus, athalia and claudina ( ).

Guy

they seem to be snacking on an owl-pellet ... eine Eule Tablette ?

I think you missed the rear Erebia in the first picture ... and I was hoping for something else for the middle Melitaea in the lower one. Oh well, the claudina was a treat. I suppose this is the same, even though there is only one spot on the upperside. I think I saw ones without any as well, but the underside spots were clear. Or is there some similar species with white spots on the underside, but none on the upperside?

You're right - I missed oeme in the first picture!

I did think about the middle Melitaea but found I couldn't come to any conclusions based just on the underside. Maybe someone else can ...

I can't speak from experience, as I've never seen claudina, but I'm sure nothing else has the white specks on the underside so yes, that must be (a male) claudina.

That species is high on my list of wanted butterflies - but I have quite successfully faked pictures of it in the past.

Guy

It should be easy to find near Mallnitz. I can tell the places I found it, but I'm sure there are many more. It was quite abundant in the two places I saw it (for sure). Not having a net meant I never did learn what species flew in what way, so I have to rely on the rare ones that sat down for a moment. The altitude was 1800-1900, but probably changes with conditions and time.

About Mallnitz: It's a very good place for butterflying! One can easily spend a week there without a car.

The village is at 1200 m and one can get to 2800m simply by taking the Wanderbus to the cable station and going up to 2700 with it. That would take about 30 min.

The other two local Wanderbus lines went to the ends of two valleys to roughly 1600 m. From there you could walk to 2100m or 2400 m depending on valley. All three directions have rather different biotypes so there is plenty of variation available.

If one wants higher, there is always Shareck at 3100m (Wanderbus + Mölltaler Gletcherbahn + Cabin to Panorama restaurant + ski lift). However, that was still covered in snow, so there wasn't much point... However, the area around the Panorama restaurant (2800m) was quite interesting. The problem with that is timing: the bus from Mallnitz reaches there ~12:00 and the last one back leaves 16:00. It doesn't leave much time for exploration if combined with walking down to lower station.