Padfield

[Lee Hurrell]

Guy - what a fantastic set of recent pictures, stunning!

I think you have that Adonis perfectly.

Cheers

Lee

[Neil Hulme]

Agreed Lee - but it's the Marbled Skipper for me
Neil

[Padfield]

As ever, I'm glad you like the pictures, and thanks for the encouragement.

Today was a full working day but I did get a moment to nip down to my local woods, mostly to look for early stages. These I didn't find, but I did come across a surprisingly large fritillary cruising along the path, at one point stopping inaccessibly on some bramble. The bramble made me think of marbled fritillary, but it clearly wasn't that and I soon decided it was Clossiana. Now the only Clossiana on the wing at this time around here is euphrosyne, so this is what I recorded it as, even though felt very uncomfortable with the ID. But it 'had' to be this. I took a quick record shot of the upperside when it stopped briefly on the path near me:



Only later did it suddenly occur to me it was a tit frit, over a month ahead of itself. This species usually emerges in mid-June, my earliest recent record being 14th June, in 2009. In the exceptionally early year of 2007 my first record was 16th June. So it is quite something to find it up and about on 10th May... Being so convinced it had to be a massive pearl-bordered fritillary I hadn't made any attempt to look at the underside.

Titania's fritillary is easy to identify in flight and a common species in the Alps. And yet my mind was quite unprepared for it and I completely failed to see what it was even when it was flying around right near me. Humbling.

Guy

[Padfield]

Another blustery, cloudy morning at my violet copper site. I said a couple of weeks ago I would go up for some better photos, so I had a bash today. What I really wanted was to photograph and film females egg-laying, but all the females I saw were still warming up.


This is a male, behaving territorially. They set up territories near rivulets in the wet ground, and always near or on aconite-leaved buttercups, which is their favourite nectar plant.


A different male.


This male is taking a break from defending his patch.


Ideal habitat contains large swathes of the buttercup, with copious bistort too.


A female sits on a bistort leaf at the edge of her domain. Beyond is drier mountainside. The survival of this species depends absolutely on the preservation of marshy areas.

Finally, here is a marsh fritillary, from the same patch:



Guy

[Padfield]

A dancing caterpillar movie, also from this morning.

I'm not very good on moth caterpillars - these are like lackey moths, but are probably some different species.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6TprkM_Dto[/video]

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

...dancing caterpillar movie...

Excellent.

A trick to try here in late summer when the garden brassicas and nasturtiums are infested with Large White caterpillars is to get quite close and SHOUT. They all rear up in unison. My kids loved doing that when they were young.

Jack

[Zonda]

My favourite is No3 which is a Guy trademark shot. With the mountains, the hills and woods, the nectaring plant, and the subject. Great stuff.

[Padfield]

The forests of fragile buttercups, growing out of marsh, the dense carpets of bistort and the general abundance of life everywhere made this a particularly difficult area for responsible photography. In several instances I held back on getting the perfect shot because I just didn't want to wade through the buttercups or tread bistort into the boggy ground, perhaps drowning whole families of dancing caterpillars (thanks for the info about large whites, Jack). It's a pity the butterfly didn't get a bit more 'wing on' for the shot Zonda liked.

Here is a big difference between Switzerland and England. I saw no one. No one had visited since I last popped up, two weeks ago. There were no footprints or trails in the marsh, no plants lying broken where a human had blundered past. There are nature reserves in Switzerland but most of the time I am butterflying in unmanaged, open, public countryside, as today.

Guy

[David M]

My favourite is No3 which is a Guy trademark shot. With the mountains, the hills and woods, the nectaring plant, and the subject. Great stuff.

Agreed. I love the way Guy often 'factors in' a bit of flora and landscape to give up all an extended element of perspective.

[Gibster]

Guy, do you reckon you could add some decent heavy metal music to your dancing caterpillar video, pleeeeeease?

Maybe Master of Puppets or Ride the Lightning by Metallica? (a coupla all-time faves of mine, you understand?)

Gibster.


PS - anyone who, even for a moment, thinks that "decent heavy metal music" is an oxymoron is mistaken. Very.

[David M]

"heavy metal music"

There's your oxymoron.

[Padfield]

Guy, do you reckon you could add some decent heavy metal music to your dancing caterpillar video, pleeeeeease?

They did remind me of of a head-banger I once knew. Unfortunately, I haven't got any heavy metal in my music collection.

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

decent heavy metal music" is an oxymoron is mistaken.

Never understood heavy metal. I have always been a huge fan of Judith Durham (lead singer of the Seekers). This is lovely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzxdgsSCth4

(Romantic) Jack

[Lee Hurrell]

My favourite is No3 which is a Guy trademark shot. With the mountains, the hills and woods, the nectaring plant, and the subject. Great stuff.

I have to agree. When looking through Guy's diary, I stopped at that photo for a long time

Cheers

Lee

[Matsukaze]

Can't help wondering if the caterpillars of the micro-moth Nemophora metallica get down to a spot of head-banging.

[Padfield]

Can't help wondering if the caterpillars of the micro-moth Nemophora metallica get down to a spot of head-banging.

Cowbells are such a constant accompaniment to butterfly-watching in Switzerland that the ears filter them out. I did notice, though, as I was crouched under a blackthorn bush this evening, looking for brown hairstreak larvae, that one bell in particular seemed to be getting louder and louder.

Then ...


"So what is it we're looking for again?"

I think the poor beast was just a bit lonely, so I scratched its nose and headed off to the woods, hoping that it would then go back and join its friends in the meadow.

In the woods, I had an enjoyable encounter with a slow-worm:



For anyone who's never got close to one of these lightning-fast creatures, here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gurFd9ssflg[/video]

Guy

[Pete Eeles]

Brilliant! I feel so sorry for the many many individuals that are disconnected from nature!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Padfield]

A slightly frustrating afternoon, with wind and cloud almost thwarting my third attempt this year to find Iolas blues at a site I first discovered in 2004 but which is becoming increasingly overgrown with poplar and bramble to the extent I wondered if the blues were threatened. In the end, I saw a single female and a single male - but can't draw any conclusions about numbers because of the weather conditions. But I did explore neighbouring areas and found that bladder senna (iolas foodplant) had colonised new, recently cleared, stony slopes and the species certainly isn't at risk here for the time being. It might just be less easy for me to find in future.

Just two and a half weeks ago I reported my first red-underwing skippers (for the year) from the same site, looking all shiny and proud. Today all individuals were pale and faded. They were still proud though, perching atop salad burnet plants - their larval foodplant:



There were plenty of other blues around, including what was almost certainly my first chalkhill blue of the year, though it was a rather distant, flight view. Adonis, turquoise, Chapman's, common, green-underside, little and Provençal short-tailed were all taking to the wing whenever the sun did show through the clouds.

But my favourite sighting of the day was a couple of large tortoiseshells that zoomed past me and carried on up a dried, stony river bed that I'd never walked along before. I followed them and was able to get some pictures of one as he caught the last rays of the sun. For those who were wondering recently what geriatric large tortoiseshells look like when they age naturally (there were questions about the condition of that one seen recently in the UK), here's the answer:



The chances are, he's ten months old, having emerged probably in mid-July last year.

He then closed his wings and rested immobile until I left:



Guy

EDIT: I think I'll add this pristine, fresh male large wall (Lasiommata maera - a close relative of the British wall butterfly, Lasiommata megera) I found this morning. Not my first of the year, but the first that has stopped near me:

[Padfield]

This and the next post are just filler, so the poplar admiral piccies to follow can enjoy being at the top of a page and stay visible for a while!

Guy

[Padfield]

Filler!

Guy