Bordeaux Day 4

Undeterred by the continuing 36C forecast I set off up the Roger Lapébie cycle track to Créon.  Fortunately there was a fair bit of shade on the way.

It turned our to be another day when butterflies were skittish and, with one very notable exception, camera shots were hard to get.

Pausing for a late breakfast at the Lidl at Latresne, there were a number of butterflies flitting around the hedgerow but the only one I got a decent view of was a meadow brown.

Stopping again at a nice meadow for a mid-morning snack of cherries, a butterfly that was clearly a skipper - probably dingy or mallow - perched on grass stalk but typically flew off not to return just as I was about to pull the trigger.  I lost count of the number of times this happened during the whole trip.

Numerous others passed through the meadow without stopping and I could only wonder in most cases "What might have that have been?"  It struck me that a lot of the ones I was seeing this week may have

Wood White

been early brood males that had no interest in anything than finding a female.

Marbled whites started to turn up as I entered a more wooded area and never during the whole trip did I see one settle more than momentarily.  There must have been going on 50, some quite small.

In this area I reckoned there might be a good chance to see a wood white and indeed several started to appear only to play the same wandering game as the marbled whites and occasionally challenging each other.  Eventually one did provide the opportunity for at least a snap for identification purposes.

Then for a period, interesting things happened. Approaching Sadirac, I stopped to check out a butterfly that I thought might be a grayling.  It disappeared but immediately afterwards, what I could clearly see was a hungarian glider also made a couple of runs along the path.  Hungarian gliders are not often recorded in France but having seen them before, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that's what it was.

A bit nearer Créon, I stopped again to check how far I still had to go, stopping at a line of cow parsley, and remembered joking with a friend that you never see butterflies on cow parsley.  Well, this time there was something of a garden behind it and there were a few things fluttering round, common blues, skippers and probably others.

It was at this point that, in complete contrast to earlier events, a small butterfly actually landed on my camera.  It didn't take much to tempt it onto my hand where it remained for some little time.

Map Butterfly

I didn't have much idea what it could be at the time.  I have seen the Map Butterfly before in Bulgaria but this is a second brood example which remarkably looks a lot different to the first.  Notably its colouration strongly resembles that of my cycling jacket, faded by the sun from the original navy blue and white to rusty brown and white.  So it maybe that's what caused its approach.

I had meant to take another look at this spot on my way up after a slow lunch in Créon and somehow managed to miss it.  But on reaching the woods again, I noticed a big fritillary, a silver-washed, darting through the trees and hoped it would return.

It did briefly - to make a couple of assaults on the reflector light on the front wheel of the rental bike!

Realising that the reflected light must have deceived it into a mating or jousting attempt, I settled down for what I hoped would be a great video opportunity. Of course it never came back.

This is what it was interested in:

Fritillary Bait?

I did remember to stop at the frustrating meadow again and saw what I took to be a large member of the copper family.  This one actually did settle but proved to be yet another clouded yellow.

Clouded Yellow

So that was obviously another trick of the light too!

Freewheeling back down the track, I discovered some bird's foot trefoil and other flowers that seemed to be attracting some interest.  I suspected small blue might be one of the contenders, but they disappeared instantly.