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Glanville Fritillary - Favourite Photo of 2017


Week 6 - Looks like Autumn has gone and it's starting to feel proper cold...so relive the warmth of the spring/summer while you select your Favourite photos.

Please could I ask that everyone waits until a topic has been opened by me for a particular species before posting photos? Of course our overseas members are very welcome to fill in the obvious gaps relating to rare UK migrants. As like last year details of locations, dates, times and circumstances would be welcome as would any accompanying stories and anecdotes or other observations of behaviour and interesting other points.

Have a goodun

Wurzel

There will not be many mainland UK pictures of this species in 2017, so i better start with the first of the few at Hutchinsons Bank, taken on 27th May, it had hatched earlier in the day in the big scrape, from an unknown larval web somewhere in the scrape area.

2018 looks like it may be a better year for this species, from the number of larvae.

For some reason I didn't concentrate much on Glanville Fritillaries this year. My most convenient site was next to my workplace and since it burnt down last year in wildfires, that colony has been wiped out.
Here is my only photo of a female from 2017 - south of France. Chris

Having made a special visit to the Isle of Wight to see the Glanville Fritillary in May I was impressed by the numbers at Compton Chine and Wheelers bay. Personally I think they have had the best year there for some years. They were spilling out of the chines up to the road in lovely sunny weather. This was extremely pleasing and I hope numbers are as good or better next year.

Mike Gibbons

Probably my best butterfly moment of 2017 was watching a swirling carnival of butterflies - Common, Adonis, Chequered and Baton Blues, Small Heaths, Dizzy Skippers and others - this Glanville Fritillary was an enthusiastic participant.

With the colony at Sand Point in Somerset now extinct, I get my Glanville fix over in France these days. They can be scarce in the Alps during July, but they're always extremely common in the Pyrenees at the back end of May: