Tag Archives: butterflies

Some while ago we spotted a guided butterfly walk around a local reserve, Totternhoe Quarry. The main quarry in the quarry would be the Duke of Burgundy (Hamearis lucina) butterfly. Since neither quarry was familiar to us, we applied to join in. At the very least we’d learn our way around another useful local wildlife habitat. At best, we’d see a relatively scarce species of butterfly – it occurs in just two sites in Bedfordshire, I believe – in the company of a specialist, the Bedfordshire butterfly recorder, so identity would not be in question.

Having applied by email, I heard nothing for what seemed like a couple of weeks and, my memory being what it is, I forgot all about it. Finally, last week, I received a thumbs up email saying we could attend and, during an uncharacteristically cooperative gap in our continuing appalling weather pattern, today we joined 20+ other enthusiasts to swarm around the quarry searching for the Duke. [It used to be referred to as the “Duke of Burgundy Fritillary” but it isn’t, in fact, a true fritillary so that part of the name has been dropped, I believe.]

Our first critter to be spotted was a Dingy Skipper (Erynnis tages). The first did not pose favourably but there were several around and I eventually snagged a reasonable shot of one without its being obscured by blades of grass. At first, It was a little difficult trying to avoid our fellow enthusiasts to get a decent photographic angle with about 25 people all trying to do the same thing. Eventually, though, things settled down and all were able to get something of a turn at the front.

Oddly enough, since I have seen it described as “a restless insect flitting rapidly from plant to plant and rarely settling for long”, the subject that seemed to help the clamour for photos die down into a more orderly affair was our very first Duke of Burgundy, which sat for a long period sunning itself, albeit behind one shadow-casting blade of grass. That’s the one here partially showing the underside. Later, in the depths of the old quarry itself, we came across a couple more Dukes who this time posed very cooperatively in the open. Here’s a link to Butterfly Conservation’s fact sheet on the Duke of Burgundy.

Time was pressing so we had to leave the Dukes eventually. Just as we started walking a section which would be “unlikely to produce anything interesting”, we disturbed three Green Hairstreaks (Callophrys rubi) feeding on a flowering hawthorn bush. These uniquely green butterflies are always a delight with their white eye-liner.

Further on was an extensive broken chalk escarpment which is home to a healthy population of butterflies known variously as Small Blue/Little Blue (Cupido minimus) when in season. (My old Collins guide uses Little Blue but more recent publications seem to use Small Blue.) However, we were a little early and this year the season is decidedly late so  none were found, neither Small nor Little. This is Britain’s smallest/littlest  butterfly so we’ll have to go back for another look in more favourable conditions.

Nature continues to be a little perverse and to confound us.

At the end of March, with the new Odonata season approaching but not yet with us in England, we were off to Spain for a 2½-week house-and-dog-sitting engagement. “Goody”, I thought, “being further south I’ll get a jump on the season and see some earlier Odos”. Wrong! I didn’t see a single one. They must be out in Spain ‘cos I’ve since discovered that the southwest of England reported Large Red Damselflies in late March, which I think is particularly early, so I can only assume that I was not looking at suitable bodies of water. Fussy little critters.

Day 1 began well with an interesting non-blue “blue” butterfly flitting about some potted geraniums the garden. At first sight it looked very similar to the Lang’s Short-tailed Blue that we had recently encountered for the first time in Madeira. It didn’t look quite right, though, from what we could remember and not having our books available, we’d have to wait to see what it might be. It, or more accurately they – there were at least two individuals – returned to the potted Geraniums almost daily. This behaviour could be something to do with the fact that they turned out to rejoice in the name of Geranium Bronze (Cacyreus marshalli). I’d certainly never heard of them before but they have apparently been imported into the UK. Interestingly, the first person to spot them in England also initially thought them to be Lang’s Short-tailed Blues.

After our initial success in the garden, the area of Spain we were visiting, the Jalon Valley, actually seemed a bit of a desert on the wildlife front. We had a hard time finding very much at all considering I was expecting a spring flush. There were plenty of wild flowers around the valley but we spotted relatively few butterflies, just the occasional individual zooming past in a frequently stiff breeze.

Persistence paid off, though, and we eventually drove up to the base of a mountain called the Bernia. On this day, Easter Sunday, it seemed as though half of the walkers in Spain had had the same idea. We found somewhere to park, though, and confined our activity to the scrub at the base of the Bernia. Eventually, Hawk-eyes (a.k.a. Carol) spotted a flitting movement on the stony ground. It was the tiniest of blue butterflies which certainly looked new to us. Happy campers! It was another critter I’d never heard of, a Panoptes Blue (Pseudophilotes panoptes). There is a confusingly similar alternative species but good ol’ iSpot seems to think my suggested id. was correct.

Hawk-eyes struck again and spotted someone with whom we were familiar flitting about some vegetation, a Green Hairstreak (Callophrys rubi). Green Hairstreaks don’t stand out against leaves very well but this one eventually settled on the ground and offered me a clear shot. Most frustratingly, a strange species of Orange Tip whizzed past and settled only briefly – too briefly for me to catch up and bring a camera into focus. It was an Orange Tip with a yellow background which I’m pretty sure must have been a Morocco Orange Tip (Anthocharis belia). Darn!

Towards the end of our trip we tried another mountain, this time behind Senija and on foot. Once again, on our way up to the cross on its summit, we were struck by an almost complete lack of wildlife. All we spotted were a few bees. Uncultivated land, plenty of wild flowers and few people to cause disturbance but no critters. Curious! Once we got to the summit, though, things changed dramatically. A Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) whizzed past. It was quickly followed by another Swallowtail. There seemed to be at least three tussling aerobatically for the high ground. Eventually we managed to catch them settled in a favourable position for a picture. Even though this one is in slightly less than perfect condition, it shows that they really are the most spectacular creatures.

Then the fun really started. I spotted another pair which looked more like my beloved Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius) with stunning black tiger-stripes. These, however, looked as if the stripes were on a white background as opposed to the more familiar (to me) cream background. I snapped a couple of shots and waded into iSpot back at home base. We’d hit a bit of a naming conundrum. The white version is most frequently called the Spanish Swallowtail or Spanish Scarce Swallowtail. Some authorities regard it as a subspecies and refer to it as Iphiclides podalirius feisthamelii whereas others regard it as a separate species and refer to Iphiclides feisthamelii. Finally back chez nous, my latest French language book, Guide des Papillons d’Europe et d’Afrique du Nord does refer to I. feisthamelii and notes the following:

I. feisthamelii est considéré comme une sous-espèce par certains auteurs. Cependant, les genitalia des deux sexes sont bien distincts.

… which I think is accurately translated thus:

I. feisthamelii is considered a subspecies by certain authors. However, the genitalia of both sexes are very different.

There’s something comforting about being back in the realms of different insect genitalia. I think I’ll enter the I. feisthamelii camp. Anyway, after all that, here is the fabulous creature.

Madeira’s population is roughly 250,000 in round numbers. About 50% of these live in the capital, Funchal, with its buildings climbing up hills surrounding the harbour rather like the banked seats in an amphitheatre. Today was our last full day on Madeira and we were free to wander around and explore the town to our hearts’ content.

Target one was the market, which starts at 7:00 AM. Outside the hall we came across ladies selling flowers dressed in their traditional costumes o colourfully striped skirts and hats bearing contrasting side triangular shapes that looked to me like pixie ears. Cute! Such ladies, we were told, used to walk down the mountain side carrying their flowers to sell at the market, then walk back up the mountain side after their day at the office; distances of anything up to 10kms/7mls each way. That’d keep you fit.

The market hall itself, on two levels, were mainly the fruit and vegetable stalls with the buzz and bustle I’ve come to expect of non-UK European food markets. I hadn’t, however, come across anything approaching high-pressure fruit selling before but here, they were particularly keen on offering tasters of mangoes, passion fruits and the like followed by a pre-emptive close. We tasted – everything was excellent – but resisted signing a contract.

At the rear of the market hall was the fish market where we were able to come face to face with a Madeiran speciality, the black scabbard fish. Being essentially an old volcano in the Atlantic ocean, the land shelves away rapidly and the surrounding waters get very deep very quickly. The scabbard fish is a deep water fish that is, well, frankly bitch ugly; it’s very long and thin with a black skin, large eyes and fearsome looking teeth – most unappetizing in appearance. However, once prepared it makes damn good eating and is traditional served with another popular commodity on Madeira, bananas. Fried fish and bananas – yum! It sounds odd but it’s a curiously interesting combination – exactly what I jump at on a menu.

After the market, target two was one of Funchal’s two main gardens. Both require a climb and one way to achieve the climb is via a cable car which, though it struck us as a little on the expensive side, looked the most fun. Actually, there are two separate cable car runs linked by a short walk. The first takes you up to the higher of the two gardens, the tropical garden. The second brings you about half-way back down again to the lower botanical garden. To return, you have to reverse your journey and go back up before descending all the way back to sea level again. This seemed a slightly curious arrangement to me but I’m sure there was some logic to it somewhere. One of our party had already visited the tropical garden and pronounced it “very green” so Carol fancied the botanical garden instead. The combined ticket for both cable cars and entrance to the tropical garden was ~€28.00 each.

Our choice turned out to be a good one. Firstly, it most certainly wasn’t just green:

Secondly, while Carol was in her element and I was wandering around pretending to be interested in nature without a pulse, up popped a very unexpected visitor and landed beside me posing cooperatively for my first dragonfly encounter of 2012. It even waited long enough for me to purloin Carol’s proper camera. New species are always a thrill and, though this looked basically like a Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum), it was actually a related species, an Island Darter (Sympetrum nigrifemur). By itself, this would have made my day but then I spotted a new entry for the butterfly collection, too, a Macaronesian Red Admiral (Vanessa volcania). Big grins all round.

Our wildlife thrills were not yet over. Having retraced our cable car route back to sea level and whilst investigating Funchal itself, we spotted a few large butterflies flitting about the small but charming Municipal Garden in the middle of town. I knew that the Canary Islands and Madeira were two of the very few places in Europe that were home to populations of Monarch/Milkweed butterflies and, though I might have secretly held hopes that I’d see one, I really didn’t expect to. Here they were, another new species for the collection. They weren’t alone, either. A very small blue was flitting about the grass and, though we really needed our wildlife lenses, we did manage to catch it on pixels and identify it as Lang’s Short-tailed Blue. (A publishable view of the topside proved impossible to get.)

All in all, a pretty successful day.

In Nouvelle Année, Nouveau Guide des Papillons, I introduced my speculative purchase of a French field guide to butterflies. I had wanted to replace my aging Collins Field Guide to the Butterflies of Britain and Europe for some time and my decision to “go French” was based largely on v. disappointing reports of that publication’s latest incarnation, the Collins Butterfly Guide. Just check out a few of these reviews and you’ll see what I mean. The main problem seems to be errors in some distribution maps. A contact on iSpot spoke well of the French publication so I went French. OK, so, the French can be a bit of a challenge and there are no English common Names for the species, of course. Instead, the French vernacular names are used. Naturally, the scientific/binomial names are included and my basic plan was to resort to these, then cross-check for the English name.

Yesterday, I tried my plan for the first time in vengeance. I have a couple of dubiously identified Fritillaries and wanted to see what I could decide using the wonderful illustrations of Mr Lewington in the French book. I thought I had a photo of a Knapweed Fritillary so I looked up the scientific name in my old English Field Guide: Melitaea phoebe. Off to the new French publication’s index for Melitaea phoebe. It listed three Melitaea species but none of them were phoebe. There were several Mellicta species (also Fritillaries) but none of them were phoebe either. I’d fallen at the first hurdle.

On the good ol’ InterWeb, I eventually found a French butterfly website talking about a Cinclidia phoebe. Arghh! Back to the French index and, sure enough, there was Cinclidia phoebe and it was, indeed, the Knapweed Fritillary, or Mélitée des centaurées, as the French prefer to call it.

I contacted a very helpful man on one of the French butterfly websites (Butterflies of France) about the naming. He had not heard of Cinclidia but found it (on the InterWeb, of course) “in a historic context”. He also went on, very helpfully, to confirm my suspected id.

Scientific names are supposed to help cross language boundaries and ensure that we are all talking about the same thing. That only works if we all use the same name. Variable scientific names get us nowhere, it seems to me. I seem to have a more modern book but not the most recent names. Even the main name in France is Melitaea phoebe.

Oh, and just to add insult to injury, inside the front cover of my new French publication I spotted this:

L’édition originale Anglaise a paru chez HarperCollins Publishers sous le titre: Collins Field Guide of Butterflies of Britain and Europe.

Marvelous!

At least the distribution maps are corrected, though.

After yesterday’s excitement of seeing my first ever Downy Emerald (Cordulia aenea) at Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve, I just couldn’t resist returning today with Carol (she had been out volunteering for the Greensand Trust) in the hope that she’d be able to see these very special critters, too. We hit the reserve at about 2:00PM and were confronted by two other cars – another relatively rare feature. My fears about dog walkers – dogs tend to crap on the ground, bark and scare away real animals – were groundless and we were confronted by an enthusiasm of wildlife watchers. [Note: enthusiasm is my new collective noun for those keen on wildlife. ]

One of the guys was similarly armed with an example of TheBeast. He and I chatted for a while and he told me there was a trick to getting TheBeast to autofocus with a 1.4X extender attached; normally you are forced to focus manually. Canon causes any lens with a max aperture < f5.6 to refuse to autofocus in the company of the 1.4X which is a drag for those of us with older eyes, especially when modern autofocus cameras don’t provide any manual focussing assistance such as a split-image or a Fresnel screen. The trick is to tape up three of the pins on the 1.4X such that the lens doesn’t know the extender’s there. Autofocussing is restored. It works best in bright light but I’ve tried it and it does seem to work, albeit somewhat more slowly than normal.

Another of the enthusiasm, who turned out to be Rory Morrisey of LBNature, was just scooting off to grab yet another enthusiast. Now we were five. Together we tromped off to a lake which these guys thought was the breeding ground of the Downy Emeralds. Sure enough we found on scrabbling about on a low plant – another female. The reason for her scrabbling about soon became apparent. Whilst yesterday I had seen a female Downy with a minor defect to her right hind-wing, this poor creature had a very badly deformed left hind-wing. What’s going wrong with the Bedfordshire Down Emerald population, I wonder? I was beginning top think that I wasn’t going to get a shot of a pristine specimen.

We continued around the reserve where I was delighted to see a fabulously bright Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas) butterfly, which have only recently begun to emerge. Somehow, everything ended up in focus, too. How thrilled was I? Well, not quite as thrilled as when, a couple of minutes later, a male Downy Emerald very obligingly appeared and posed in the perfect position for pictures, Not only was it in a perfect position but it also seemed to be in perfect condition. Brilliant! I was a very delighted enthusiast.

I’ve now seen four Downy Emeralds at Sandhouse Lane and two, both females, have had imperfections. I’m sure damage frequently occurs given the life cycle of Odonata but it would be interesting to know if that’s all that’s happening here.

[Egg-citing Easter was a bit too obvious, even for me, but I thought I should note the possibility.]

First of all, my dear ol’ mum bought me a lovely Thornton’s dark chocolate Easter Egg. How much of a big kid can you get? To reciprocate, we thought we’d drag her off to a magnificent bluebell wood so she could mutter things like “ooh” and “ahh”. Spring has been such that everything is happening earlier than normal this year. Bluebells burst out about two weeks ahead of their usual schedule and the wood up near Ashridge is one of the more spectacular displays available and attracts hoards from miles around. You have to be patient and/or work hard to get shots sans bright red shirts and tripods spoiling the view but it can be done – just. The scent was fabulous, too, but I can’t embed that with this technology.

The critters that we love are also generally ahead of schedule and are wasting no time doing what comes naturally, making babies while the sun shines. We began on Easter Sunday by visiting the Chiltern Hills on another flower hunt, this time in search of early orchids. It was really Carol in search of orchids ‘cos I’m really only fascinated by things with a heartbeat – well, a pulsating abdomen, more accurately – but it was a great excuse for a trip out with the roof down in this utterly unbelievable run of spring weather. We thought that the orchids might also have been substantially advanced but not advanced enough, it seems. Carol spotted a few telltale spotted leaves of early purple orchids but no actual flower spikes.

I’d lagged behind photographing a Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus) in the act, I think, of ovipositing several future Holy Blues and, as I caught up with her (Carol, that is, not the female Holly Blue), she asked, “do you know a butterfly which is bright green and navy blue?”. Thinks: the only green I can think of is the Green Hairstreak but I don’t think it has any blue on it. “No, not really. Green Hairstreaks are green but …”.

Carol had scared up an elusive green beast which had fluttered off into the undergrowth. Naturally, it’s very difficult to spot a green beast in green undergrowth but, well, I’m getting used to hawk-eyes Carol seeing such things. Sure enough, she found it again. The beast in question was, indeed, a Green Hairstreak (Callophrys rubi). I think you’ll see the magnitude of the challenge from this picture. I have been fascinated with butterflies for 50 years, since Brooke Bond issued a collection of butterfly cards in their PG Tips tea packets. I’d drink tea just to make mother buy another packet so I could collect more cards. In 50 years of interest, however, I’d never before seen a Hairstreak of any description, green or otherwise. With camouflage this good, is it any wonder I hadn’t spotted one? This was a very special day for me. It certainly made up for the lack of orchids.

On our way back to the car, carol snagged this shot of the rather unkindly named Dingy Skipper (Erynnis targes). Two had been spiralling about in a territorial tussle and Carol picked the one that was in better condition. I, on the other hand … well, enough said.

On Easter Monday we turned our attention to our local patch, Sandhouse Lane NR, mainly to see how the Odonata activity was getting on. I’ve recently joined the Bedfordshire Natural History Society and have started submitting records of Dragonflies and Damselflies using their online recording system. They are particularly interested this year in Large Red Damselflies, the first ones to emerge in the spring, so I was keen to contribute what I could to their survey. Damned if we didn’t see three more Green Hairstreaks there en route to the likely dragonfly hangout. The light on this shot casts some very nice textural shadows so I’m forcing this second shot upon you. 50 years of famine and suddenly my world is full of Green Hairstreaks. Weird.

Finally we did make it to the dragonfly hangouts where the world was also suddenly full of copulating Large Red Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula). We saw them at a couple of locations in Sandhouse Lane but this tandem pair is, I think, the best and most interesting shot of the bunch – and I do mean bunch – because it helps distinguish the markings of the male (in front) versus female (at the back). We spotted a lone example of a second species, too, a Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ishnura elegans), though it wasn’t co-operative enough to pose well. Maybe next time.

The season is hotting up.

For Odonata, a.k.a. Dragonflies and Damselflies, that is.

It has been a long winter for a relatively new addict for many reasons, not the least of which, of course, were my surgical experiences caused by ridding myself of a freshly emerged cancerous prostate. Freshly emerged last September, that is. My hope was to have myself fixed up and recovered by the time the new wildlife watching season started. Not wishing to get ahead of myself, but it looks as though it may have happened.

Given my latest addiction, a few weeks ago I decided to join the Bedfordshire Natural History Society. Using their records from 2010, I discovered that the first Damselflies records were Large Red Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula – these are always first) on 20th April, 2010, at Duck End Nature Reserve at Maulden, Beds. We’ve had some staggeringly good weather this spring so off I went with my spotter (hawk-eyes Carol doesn’t miss much) looking for much more welcome freshly emerged cellular clusters.

Sally Satnav got very confused trying to get us to within a spit of Duck End. Some scurrilous rascal has slung in a completely new road heading for Bedford, a road that neither I nor she knew about. Thinking I was at a different roundabout, I mistakenly turned onto said new road. Poor Sally!; as far as she was concerned our little Mazda MX5 was emulating our Honda CR-V and was merrily tromping across the farm fields of Bedfordshire like a fully accomplished off-roader. Garmins are irritatingly amusing when you get off course – “recalculating, recalculting, recalculating”. Actually, since our Garmin is currently set to French [Ed: Don’t ask] she muttered, very sexily, “calcul encore, calcul encore, calcul encore”. Naturally, since we were now not on a road as far as she was concerned, she had a very hard time calcul-ing encore. Eventually, though, we hit a road that did exist a few months ago and both she and we were back on track. OK, Sally, don’t panic.

With the help of a local allotment holder, we located Duck End NR, forced our way through about 10 football-toting youths [Ed: Darwin, how much better the world is when Satan’s little disciples are incarcerated in school!] and started looking for signs of intelligent life. Orange Tip butterflies were in profusion but very uncooperative. A Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria) was much better behaved and basked with its wings nicely opened. Nearby, a Small White (Artogeia rapae) seemed to be sucking moisture from some mud but didn’t sit very long and certainly not with its wings open – they rarely do. Both enabled me to get a little practice, though.

For a pocket-handkerchief of a reserve, Duck End sports four bodies of water. Having tried #1 and #2 to not avail, I was studying  #3 when I heard my spotter dry, “here!” back at the far side of #1. Bingo, hawk-eyes had seen our first damselfly of the year. Just as I was getting my camera ready, it flew off into the trees. Bugger! We waited, we watched – nothing. Curses! I shouldn’t have worried, hawk-eyes wandered a little further along the hawthorn hedge and spotted a few other Large Red damsels. Hawthorn hedges and brambles make for a confusing background, confusing enough to cause my Canon EOS 40D autofocus logic to get very confused. Bugger! Over winter, I’d forgotten how frustrating this focus-hunting can be. Eventually I got it stabilized enough for some decent shots of these truly beautiful critters, though.

Hawk-eyes struck again when she found a couple of exuviae attached to some of the vegetation surrounding the damsels’ nursery pond. One was particularly interesting because at least one lamella was still attached to the rear end of the abdomen. The lamellae, there are usually three, are like gills  for damselfly larvae and absorb oxygen from the water .

I have just realized that that, during this entire afternoon, not once did I think about any incontinence. That’s the first day that’s happened for four months. Wow!

An excellent day – not only was the weather stunning but my friends are back! Something else may be mostly back, too, but I don’t want to jinx it.

As summer wanes and autumn thinks about waxing, since we were unable to return to our beloved France for September, we took ourselves down to renew our acquaintance with the New Forest. Billy was very excited to be trying something new; we had booked him in to the Forestry Commission’s campsite at Setthorns Inclosure.

The New Forest was declared after 1066 by William the Conqueror so it’s probably getting a little long in the tooth nearly 1000 years on. Still, New Forest it is and New Forest it shall remain. Much of it is more like heath land than what most of us think of as forest; there are no trees in some areas. The term “forest” actually referred to a hunting ground, though, originally. There are various smaller subdivisions of the forest, I suspect fenced off (though that’s a guess), all going by the name “inclosure”.

The New Forest is a well known stronghold of Odonata and, since the season is drawing to a close, I was keen to see what I could. Carol found a very helpful man, Doug Overton, who has a website called New Forest Dragonflies and who, when prompted, recommended a couple of locations for us to go hunting. What a nice man!

We were there for 10 days and, though the weather could have been kinder, our trip was what I would call v. successful. We saw three new (to us) species of Odonata, though one, the Golden-ringed Dragonfly (Cordulegaster boltonii) did not cooperate with the camera and settle. A Keeled Skimmer (Orthetrum coerulescens) was much more helpful as was a Beautiful Demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens). Actually, we’ve seen Beautiful Demoiselles in France but not in England before and they are a different subspecies.

Though not a new species to us, we did see something else new in the form of a female Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea). Our first view was of one female ovipositing in a small pond near some New Forest ponies we were watching. Naturally I had the wrong lens with me but managed to snag a couple of half-way decent shots, despite her being in a rather inaccessible location. A day or so later we saw another fly into some tall grass and come to rest, hanging motionless. That’s a very rare state for a hawker to be in. It took us a while to see her but eventually we did and …here she is.

Whilst hunting the Odonata, we also bagged a new butterfly in this terrible year for Lepidoptera. (Not only were there hardly any butterflies around this year but there were hardly any moths, either. Our open windows with lights on have attracted very little.) However, I saw a blue and snapped it. Though the picture isn’t very good, when I looked closer back at Billy, I knew I had never seen one before. It is a Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus).

The New Forest was delightful; we will have to return next season for some more wildlife excitement.

We’ve been back from La Belle France for about six weeks now and it seems a little like a distant memory. Despite our suffering worse weather than we’d hoped, we did seem to reuse quite a lot of pixels on our wildlife and nature interests. We were lucky enough to see several species new to us and our catalogues have grown substantially. In that respect, it was a very successful trip.

It’s been a long and laborious process but I’ve finally managed to update our insect web albums. Not wishing to make any single album soporifically large, I’ve now separated butterflies from moths, and dragonflies from damselflies.

Those sharing my love of six-footed friends can see more than these two preview shots in the updated web albums here:

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Butterflies 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Moths 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Dragonflies 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Damselflies

It’s always quite a thrill when I see a new species of butterfly. I don’t mean a new one to science, of course, just a species that I haven’t personally seen before. The excitement is usually caused by the more colourful species, though. This time in France, I was waxing lyrical about a white, for Darwin’s sake.

We had finally been graced with some brilliantly sunny weather and temperatures were hitting 35°C/95°F where we were staying at Fanjeaux, a little south of Carcassonne. Having been told of an attractive lake – a reservoir, actually, enclosed by a damn – with walks, we decided to go up into the Pyrenees to have a look and cool down a little. Who knows, maybe I’d get lucky and see an Apollo butterfly. [Ed: Dream on.]

It’s about a 90-minute drive up to the reservoir and, as usual, we had not made an early start so we stopped en route for a picnic lunch before hitting the walking trails. We found a delightful picnic area beside a river babbling its way down the mountain. Half way through my sandwich I glanced at a white butterfly feeding on some nearby flowers. I really only glanced at it because I was keeping an eye out for those elusive Apollos. This, of course, was not an Apollo but it did look unusual, not your ubiquitous Large White. The underside of the wings sported a fine tracery of black lines. Vague recollections of something called a Black-veined White surfaced. Butterfly hunting trumps hunger so I exchanged my half sandwich for a whole camera and bounded off to try and snag the delightful creature on pixels.

As usual with whites, the Black-veined White (Aporia crataegi) tends to rest with its wings closed. Not so much of a problem because the underside and topsides match. However, I did manage to get a shot of the topsides as it spread its wings and took off. Freezing a butterfly at take off shows a little of the interesting contortions they go through flying. This also shows the forewings looking near transparent in places so this may be a female – it’s supposedly the females that exhibit this feature. A reasonably successful first encounter.

France is seething with Marbled Whites (Melanargia galathea) so I’ve watched thousands of them flitting about but I hadn’t yet grabbed a decent picture of one; again, generally because they sit with their wings closed. This time I found one that was periodically opening its wings as it fed – well, half-opening, at least. While I was clicking away, though, I did take the underside and only when I looked later did I realize how attractively marked the underside of a Marbled White actually is.

Regrettably still no Apollo but these guys will shortly be added to my butterfly web album/catalogue.