www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I have several photos that I took many years ago (1992) on walks above the town of Merano in the Sud-Tirol. Most of these were taken on the path known as the Merano Hoehenweg, shown below, where the path can be seen on the right of the photo, slanting across the scree slope:
In places, streams trickled down the mountainside and attracted numbers of butterflies to the damp areas. Although I am fairly sure of the identities of some of these species, I would be grateful for any views on IDs, especially the Blues and Browns. These are all from scans of old negatives, so I cannot be sure of the accuracy of the colours (click on image to enlarge):
EDIT : IDs provided by padfield added under each photo
all Mazarine Blue
1 Erebia oeme (bright-eyed ringlet)
2 Erebia tyndarus (Swiss brassy ringlet)
3 Erebia euryale (large ringlet)
4 Lasiommata maera (large wall)
1 Melitaea athalia (heath fritillary)
2 Two didyma (spotted fritillary) and one athalia
3 didyma
4 athalia
1 Lycaena virgaureae (scarce copper).
2 heavily marked Brenthis daphne (marbled fritillary)
3 Issoria lathonia (Queen of Spain)
4 I. lathonia


Mike

Hi Mike. The first set of four all look like mazarine blue to me. The first is the most likely to be contested because it has some of the feel of a little blue.

For the next set I would go for:

1 Erebia oeme (bright-eyed ringlet)
2 Erebia tyndarus (Swiss brassy ringlet)
3 Erebia euryale (large ringlet)
4 Lasiommata maera (large wall)

Then:

1 Melitaea athalia (heath fritillary)
2 Two didyma (spotted fritillary) and one athalia
3 didyma
4 athalia

Finally:

1 I'm a bit torn on this one. By the markings, it looks like Lycaena virgaureae - the scarce copper. But something about the whole thing smacks of Lycaena hippothoe (eurydame) - maybe it's the purplish hue, which I believe is an artefact. On the whole, I go for virgaureae.
2 I think this is a rather heavily marked Brenthis daphne (marbled fritillary)
3 Issoria lathonia (Queen of Spain)
4 lathonia

Guy

Many thanks for your help, Guy. I was confident about some of them and very unsure of others, so it's great to have them all sorted, at last! At the time, I thought the copper was virgaureae - it was a grab shot but I remember the vivid copper hue and I suspect the purple is just a processing artefact.

I'll add captions to the original post, to make the pics more useful for anyone who looks in!

Mike