Padfield

[Padfield]

I knew there might be aurorae last night and kept a watchful eye out until about 23h00, but then went to bed. This was a mistake: Vincent Baudraz e-mailed me at one in the morning with an amazing shot of the northern lights, but by that time I was fast asleep and didn't get his urging to go outside! Nevertheless, I think I did get a reflected glimpse of them. On Minnie's evening walk, I saw what looked like a glowing, Chinese lantern hanging over the woods in the north-west. I quickly realised it was the new moon - but the 'dark' part of it was so bright you could see the maria almost as clearly as if it were a full moon. As a seasoned moon-watcher, I'd never seen anything quite like it. I think the earth's atmosphere must have been so luminous it was reflected in the moon. I only had my iPhone, and of course the moon had set by the time I got home, but I got a record shot:



That is a new moon, not a full moon!

It was a warm, sunny day today, so Minnie and I headed to Valais. I had several things in mind, but chose my first site in the hope of seeing de Prunner's ringlet as it is usually common there. I did see two, both in flight (presumably males looking for females) but the species was distinctly uncommon today. In fact, the general butterfly scene here was subdued. Provençal short-tailed blues were the commonest Lycaenid and probably the commonest butterfly - all beautifully fresh:





Small heath came a close second:



There were a couple of Camberwell beauties roding the tracks but these are looking a little worn round the edges now:



Moving on - or rather, back west - we had more luck. Two more year ticks quickly followed: Adonis blue and spotted fritillary. Both were out in good numbers, especially the spotted fritillaries:





There were also good numbers of rosy grizzled skippers:





This safflower skipper cut a lonely figure ...



... until he was joined by a couple of wood whites:



I think the temperature climbed into the low or mid 20s and Minnie certainly felt the heat:





At 12 years old, she needs a ready supply of water at all times.

The first nightingales were singing and the first damselflies were out. It really is nearly spring ... This is a teneral male azure damselfly:



And this is a teneral female:



I didn't see any true adults, so they must all have emerged very recently.

This adder was motionless out in the open in the shade, under a bridge, but when I approached it to get a photo it immediately zoomed off into the herbiage:



I'll probably go up my local mountain tomorrow and see what is happening up there.

Guy

[Wurzel]

Cracking PSTB's Guy and as always the Spotted Frit looks like an artificial butterfly, something AI conjured up If that's nearly spring there must be a veritable explosion of diversity when the season actually does arrive

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[David M]

A nice range of subjects in your last post, Guy.

This is a time of year when fresh butterflies outnumber the faded ones. I daresay you'll be encountering more over the next few outings.

[Padfield]

Thanks Wurzel and David. The weather has since degraded back to gloom and rain, and I really do worry for the butterflies this season. On Sunday I found my first grizzled skipper (malvae) on my local mountain but there was precious little else. The same day, a pain in my neck became a full-blown neck seizure - perhaps because I thought I could flex my way out of it - and by Monday morning I was in extreme pain. By one of those ironic twists (if you will excuse the pun), I heard two wrynecks calling as I left the house in the morning to walk Minnie. I didn't have my camera, as my neck and shoulders were too painful, and by the time I had gone back to get it they had stopped.

The neck is now on the mend, thanks to a brace I bought at the chemist's, and on this afternoon's wet walk I saw a bedraggled wryneck in the grass, hunting grubs. The camera was in the bag, because of the rain, but the bird didn't go far as I got it out, and I got a few shots before it finally flew off with its grub:









I had thought it was a young one, because of its scrappy, fluffy look. But given how well it flew and the fact it didn't eat its grub, I wonder if it is an adult. Advice on that would be welcome. I hope it's taking that grub back to a hungry brood ...

This is the last picture I got, high in another tree, and the grub is clearly still in its bill:



Guy

[Wurzel]

So was this a case of Pathetic Fallacy (or the whatever the bird equivalent is)? Hope your neck is better now. Great stuff with shots and not the usual view of a Wryneck - it's often that 'slightly lighter tone showing up amongst the branches of that bush' - at least that was what my first one was like

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

So was this a case of Pathetic Fallacy (or the whatever the bird equivalent is)?

Pathetic fallacy? You mean that wryneck wasn't really mocking me when he casually looked 180° to the left then 180° to the right?

This has always been my jinx bird, if you'll excuse another pun. I saw my first in 2007, at Minsmere, before the days of super-zooms, and got a few poor shots:



I thought that had broken the jinx, but it hadn't. Only this year did I suddenly catch on to the song/call and discovered there are wrynecks all around me in Leysin. I hope to get more and better photos now.

Guy

[Padfield]

The weather is still dominated by cloud and rain but the butterflies are brilliant at exploiting any opportunities that arise. I had little time today, as I was teaching in the afternoon, but in the morning visited a site in the Val d'Hérens where Nickerl's fritillaries fly. When I arrived it was cloudy and none were flying. But as soon as the sun shone, Nickerl's frits appeared as if from nowhere. They were all males and seemed in endless search of females, but whenever the sun went in again - which it did, regularly - they would stop and I could get a few photos. This is a meadow species and I never venture across meadows to chase butterflies because I try not to crush vegetation (and farmers can get very angry ...) but I managed a few poor shots. My camera is not good in poor light. These are three different males:






(the same male as the last)


(this one has something of heath frit about it and although I believe it is Nickerl's, I'm not 100%)

Because of the weather, I never even glimpsed an underside.

Nickerl's fritillaries are very local in Switzerland. They are superficially similar to heath fritillaries but smaller and darker and rather weaker in flight, so they are in fact easier to identify on the wing than at rest (even though I would never submit a flight identification as a confirmed record).

Glanville fritillaries fly at the same site but look completely different on the wing. Glanvilles are fighter jets by comparison. Here is one from today:



Also new for the year - and also photographed in cloud - was Osiris blue:





Osiris blue is closely related to little blue and the females can be quite hard to distinguish with certainty. The males are unmistakable, however, with their deep blue uppers and linear margins.

Last night I walked Minnie out to the nearest white-letter hairstreak elm - about 10 mins walk from my house (at Minnie speed). The weather was a bit ominous as we set off ...



... and as we arrived, it started pouring. Nevertheless, I was still able to locate a couple of cats rather high up. Here is one of them, apparently preferring the old elm flowers to the leaves:



Guy

[Wurzel]

A wow for the Osiris Blue - that colour I reckon that you shouldn't have a problem with Wrynecks anymore after the your last sighting Guy, I reckon the karma will break the jinx

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

Hi Wurzel. Yes, the jinx (or is that Jynx?) is finally broken - I've now tuned my antennae to wryneck frequency and realise they have probably been in front of my eyes all along. The thing is, they actually look much more normal and passerine-like than I had imagined. Here's a very distant shot of one today - I thought I'd made a mistake and got a barred warbler when I first looked at the back of my camera!



And here's a couple of slightly closer views:





They're also smaller than I'd thought.

Little movement on the butterfly front, with cloud and rain order of the day. But the first little blues were on the wing in Leysin yesterday - several weeks behind schedule:



Guy

[Wurzel]

They are cracking shots Guy, especially the second one - really interesting posture there Being surprised at the size of bird is a common occurrence as its so difficult to get the correct idea from a guide book. That's the advantage that butterfly guides have in that they can illustrate to almost life size

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

You're right about the size, Wurzel. I well remember my first lesser spotted woodpecker - a tiny little creature! I'd imagined something much bigger and more dramatic.

The weather in the Alps continues to be appalling. Cloud and rain, day after day, and those occasional days of sun just don't seem to be enough to let the season develop. At the altitude of Leysin we are weeks behind schedule. Yesterday was mostly rain, occasionally torrential, so Minnie and I jumped onto the train to the Papiliorama. Minnie refuses to walk in the rain and loves train journeys, so it suited us both. She then sat in the free kennels for a couple of hours, watching the passers by, while I had some time with the tropical butterflies.

There are usually a few plain tigers flying, and this is one of the species that breeds freely in the Papiliorama. Here is a female ovipositing and the egg she laid on an Asclepias flower:





This is a dark blue tiger, Tirumala septentrionalis, also laying:





When I visited India, there were common crows, Euploea core adorning almost every tree. Recently, this has been the commonest butterfly in the Papiliorama, and it always brings back happy memories:



There are always lots of Heliconids of many species. Here are H. numata on the left and a form of H. melpomene on the right:



Here are a couple of H. atthis in flight ...



... and here a lustful group of mostly geriatric H. hecale:



This is the caterpillar of a Caligo species (an owl butterfly) ...



... and this a Morpho - maybe peleides, as that is the commonest Morpho here:



This adult, however, is Morpho achilles:



As always, I took hundreds of photos, so here is just a small sample:


(Doleschallia bisaltide)


(Heliconius doris)


(Myscelia cyaniris)


(Hypolimnas bolina)


(Cethosia cyane)

Salamis parhassus was a new species for me. This is an African forest butterfly:



More rain today, though there was a brief period of sun between 16h00 and 17h30 ...

Guy

[Padfield]

With a little sunshine forecast for about midday, we headed off to my old violet copper hunting grounds today:



In fact, since I moved to Leysin, this is no longer my nearest site, but I went for old times' sake. It was about 10°C and mostly cloudy, so success wasn't guaranteed, and in fact, I saw almost no butterflies on the way - just a small tortoiseshell and a green hairstreak.

By the time I arrived at the site, a few minutes of sun would be alternating with 10 or more minutes of cloud, and for about 40 minutes I saw nothing t all. Then a wood white flew, then a little blue, and hopes were raised:





I sat and drank a beer while Minnie searched among the aconite-leaved buttercups and bistort for coppers:



When the sun went in again for twenty minutes or so, I moved to another part of the site, where we finally found a single male violet copper, wings spread under the cloud:



I watched him from one side while Minnie stood guard the other side to stop him flying away:



As soon as the sun came out and I could get a sharper shot, he flew up, to spar with another male before disappearing:



They were the only two we saw, despite searching more widely:



Then back to cloud:



This northern wall was my first of the year, and flew despite the heavy cloud at the time:





That was it for the butterflies up the mountain ...



... but we did see a single painted lady as we walked back down again afterwards:



Guy

[Wurzel]

That shot with Minnie standing guard is brilliant and made even better with the guard dog peeking out form behind the grasses I think this species is near the top of my'I'd love to see' list

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

Hi Wurzel. The problem with violet copper, from your point of view, is that you have to take a holiday during term time! In Switzerland, at least, it starts flying after the summer term has begun and is on its last legs by the end of June. A few straggle on into July at the higher sites but coming in July is a gamble for this species. Glad you liked the picture of Minnie. She's a real poser.

On occasion in the past, Minnie has been looking entirely in the wrong direction for this butterfly ...





Spot the tender bistort leaves around her feet - the foodplant of this butterfly. I will have been doing my very best not to tread on any!

Today's featured creature was to have been Swiss zephyr blue, Plebejus (or Kretania) trappi. Last year, bizarrely, I didn't see any, so I thought I'd make an effort this year. Partial sun was forecast for the morning, so I headed to a spot where I know they breed, arriving shortly before midday. It turned out the main patch had been cordoned off, no doubt to protect the butterfly, so I obligingly peered in from the edges. I saw just one male while looking in a sunny period of about 10 minutes, so presume they are not really on the wing yet. At peak, there are hundreds here. So Minnie and I wandered a little more widely along the roads to see what we could see. A few other blues were around:


(Adonis)


(green-underside)


(little)


(common)

And I saw my first red-underwing skippers of the year:



I also saw my first great sooty satyr of the year, though this was at distance, over a meadow.

Other species included orange tip, Berger's clouded yellow and green hairstreak:







Just as we were about to head back for the bus, some distance from the main trappi site, I suddenly spotted a male Swiss zephyr blue taking minerals and liquids on the rocks by the road:





I got just one shot of the underside as he tootled around:



This is an alpine endemic and almost a Swiss endemic - it's found just over the border in Italy and France too, though its type locality is Simplon in Switzerland. Older works treat it as one of many subspecies of Plebejus pylaon, the zephyr blue, but most of these have long been regarded as species in their own right and molecular analysis supports the idea trappi is a good species.

As I arrived at the site I had seen a fresh mountain dappled white nectaring briefly on lilac, but it flew before I could get my camera on it. There was lots of foodplant around (Ericastrum nasturtiifolium) but while I was on site I didn't see any more butterflies. While I was waiting for the bus to go back home, another (or possibly the same) mountain dappled white flew past the same lilac bush but without stopping. I took a flight shot with the iPhone as it disappeared - good enough to confirm the identity but not much else!




(crop of the same picture)

By 14h30 it was 100% overcast again. You have to take what you can get this year ...

Guy

[essexbuzzard]

You certainly do, but your perseverance paid off Guy, well done! Zephyr Blues were common in Greece a few years ago but, as you say, they have been separated long enough to develop into full species.

Violet Copper are on my wish list too- along with everyone else’s!

[Ian Pratt]

I was interested to see your common or forest mother of pearl butterfly that you saw.
I am lucky on the Isle of Wight in that we have Butterfly World only 6 miles away.It was the first butterfly farm in a garden centre in the UK, I believe, and the fifth in the world when it opened in 1983.. I have attached a few photos.

[Padfield]

Hi Buzzard. I've run into violet coppers at 7 different sites in Switzerland and suspect they're commoner in the Alps than in most of Europe, at least partly because mountain wetlands are less liable to drainage and exploitation than lowland areas. I was hoping to find them in Leysin, where we have a little bogland where lesser marbled fritillaries fly, but I didn't see any last year. They do fly a short distance away, in the region of Les Mosses.

Hi Ian. I had a little look at Butterfly World on the internet and it does look good. It's nice to be able to trek along to the tropics when the weather is grim, isn't it? All the true butterfly species you show in this post were flying at the Papiliorama the day of my previous post. Your third one, Papilio lowi, breeds there, and males and females can both usually be seen:


(female P. lowi)


(male - both photos last Thursday)

The Heliconids can be the hardest to identify. I presume the one you show is one of the 'piano key' forms of H. melpomene. On Thursday, one of these was pestering a Heliconius atthis I was trying to photograph:



It's not the same as seeing things in the wild, but it's a very pleasant way of passing a couple of hours on a rainy day!

Guy

[David M]

It's not often I feel sorry for you from a butterfly perspective, Guy, but this run of adverse weather you seem to be having must be hugely frustrating for you?

Still, you've managed to get some excellent species into your reports lately, and of course Minnie is ever-present which is a great joy.

[Padfield]

Well might you feel sorry for me, David! Not only has the weather been utterly, utterly grim, but I've just spent over a week in the grips of flu + bronchitis - unable to sleep, eat, heal or even think. June 2024 did not begin well for Padfield ...

Today, although the weather was still pretty gloomy, I felt strong enough to take Minnie out for a proper butterfly hunt. The options were Provençal fritillary and ilex hairstreak at the other end of the valley, or Iolas blue and cardinal near Martigny. I went for the latter. Since I first discovered this particular Iolas site, in 2004, it has proved to be the single best spot in Switzerland for the butterfly, with Iolas reliably on tap every May and June. In the last few years, however, it has become increasingly overgrown and last year I was seriously concerned the butterfly might disappear there. So I expected a hard search and the possibility of failure today. To my great joy, however, someone had cleared the site up a bit, and in just the right way, so 5 or 6 good bladder sennas were standing proud on a perfect slope. Within seconds of arriving, I had seen my first blue, and over the course of the next hour was never without one or more in my field of view - up to three at a time. There were incredibly restless as it was the heat of the afternoon, and difficult to focus on in the generally overcast conditions, but I managed to get a few satisfactory snaps of a few of them. Iolas blue truly is the most magnificent butterfly: huge, majestic and powerful. You don't chase them - they can be in the next canton before you've taken a single step - you just wait and watch ...













That last, crumply one was no less flighty and active than the others. He was a regular at all the bladder sennas, doing the rounds of them, disappearing for some minutes, then coming back and doing the rounds again.

I put up a further male taking minerals as I left and finally spotted a single female heading up into the bushes at the very last minute.

A few cardinals were around, but my attention was taken up with the Iolas blues. At the far end of my walk, I was happy to see a single chequered blue. I had feared missing out on that species this year, as it is single-brooded at most of my sites.


(cardinal)


(chequered blue)

Guy

[selbypaul]

I do love an Iola's Blue! Thank goodness the site has been suitably managed.

How's the season progressing Guy? Still roughly a fortnight behind a "normal" season? (Whatever a "normal" season is these days!)