The trip in 2020 was duly cancelled, and rescheduled for 2021. Alas, who could have foreseen that this postponed trip would also fall victim to ongoing restrictions a year later.
So, it was with great anticipation that I flew out from Gatwick to Seville on Sunday 24th April 2022, "third time lucky", with my wife in tow. Our home base for the week was to be the Hotel Fuerte Grazalema, a wonderfully friendly hotel set amidst a Cork Oak forest, with stunning views, very friendly staff, a remarkably good breakfast and some rather fine house wines.
I had four objectives for this holiday: first and foremost, to see and photograph the Aetherie Fritillary, which would be a life-tick; secondly, to reconnect with a few species that I had only seen once before, and of which I needed better photographs - these were False Baton Blue, Spanish Marbled White, and Lorquin's Blue. It didn't seem that I was asking too much.
Thanks to some much valued help from a fellow European butterfly enthusiast (cheers Dave), I had a couple of "known sites" for my main target species.
We arrived late on the Sunday and settled in to our home for the week, with rather stunning views across towards the "pueblo blanco" of Grazalema.
On day two we headed south of Ubrique in search of our main quarry, but of the Aetherie there was not a sniff. Close by we found good numbers of Provence Hairstreaks, an absolutely delightful species and a huge pleasure to see. They were quite fresh and abundant, considering we were towards the end of April.
It seemed that the season was running late, and butterflies were in general quite thin on the ground at many sites. But the flowers were sensational, and while we were failing to find some of my main targets, I found myself paying closer attention to the flora - in particular the abundance of certain orchid species.
The rest of the week flew past in a blur - plenty of lovely species appeared, including frequent encounters with Spanish Festoons and Provence Orange-tips. The festoons were very variable in terms of "red-ness".
A personal highlight of the trip was an encounter with what is only my second ever Lorquin's Blue, spotted by my wife.
Other delights included the Iberian Scarce Swallowtail, the very orangey European form of the Speckled Wood , Long-tailed and Black-eyed Blues.
So, in terms of targets, I spectacularly failed to see my number one target of aetherie, and also failed to find Spanish Marbled White. On a more positive note, Lorquins and False Baton Blue were re-acquaintances that I was delighted to indulge in, as was the rather unique Provence Hairstreak. In this game, failing can just be a great excuse to try again - and I fuly intend to try again to meet up with the two targets that I missed.
To paraphrase, or perhaps rephrase a certain late rocker, "two out of four ain't bad".
