On the Bike in Avignon - Day by Day (Part 1)

Day 1

Not far East of the Avignon suburb Les Angles, there was a nice South facing bank where I spent a bit of time.  It was quickly possible to see marbled white and a number of suspected fritillaries and brown butterflies, which turned out to be meadow browns. (I had hoped for gatekeeper!)  Very conspicuous also was the violet carpenter bee, as was the case throughout the whole trip.  I hadn't realised how big their wingspan is in flight. Nearby I noticed a parked lorry whose driver seemed to give me an ironic glance as I cycled past..

Not far down the road the first white admiral appeared, as did a single, slightly dilapidated holly blue, the only time I saw one on the whole trip. 

Violet Carpenter Bee

Holly Blue

In roughly the same area the first painted lady occurred as did the almost inevitable speckled wood, the South European version obviously.

Painted Lady

Speckled Wood

More excitingly the first for me new insect was this scarce chaser, a fine looking thing:

Scarce Chaser

It does occur in the UK but rarely according to AI:- "Threatened, it primarily inhabits slow-flowing river flood plains and marshes in southern and eastern England."  However the cycle track to Aramon was as dry as a bone.

After a break in Aramon I investigated a hilly area near Théziers where there a lot of white admirals and my fist sighting of a male cleopatra while I sat eating cherries bought in Aramon market.  Here, remembering my one off experience near Bordeaux last year, I started to wonder if some the really large butterflies I could see down the hillside were in fact hungarian gliders.  In retrospect however the flight

Spotted Fritillary

pattern and wing shape were wrong, though the upper wing position could easily lead to mistaking the vertical wing stripe of the admiral for the horizontal stripe of the glider. I hope that makes sense?

On the way hope I took a rest on a lone bench near Avignon and was eventually able to identify a spotted fritillary, which was particularly interested in the orange reflectors on my bike.  It must have been feeling amorous.

I was keeping an eye open for the South facing bank near Les Angles again but all of the vegetation had been cut back and I remembered the lorry driver from earlier.

Day 2

This was the day that I planned to tour all the gardens I could find in  Avignon, partly because this proved a successful approach when I visited Bordeaux last year and partly because I was looking to find at least some shelter from very strong winds gusting up to 40 mph.

Unfortunately none of the Avignon parks I visited had much to offer the naturalist although the Jardin des Doms is a big project with potential (and was the most windswept) and I elected not to join the hordes of tourists visiting the Palais des Papes.

What I did find however was a very nice piece of flower meadow sitting for no apparent reason next to a car park near the Chemin des Canaux cycle track.  Here there were a lot of small coppers for whom the mating season had clearly begun, making it easy to spot the difference between the males and females.

Male Small Copper

Female Small Copper

I don't think I've ever noticed this gender difference before.  The male is well darker.

Common blues were also mating and less easy to catch up with as constantly on the move and a few large skipper were also sighted.

However, the one that got me really going was a scarce swallowtail, drifting repeatedly around the sight.  I have seen them before but seldom and did not know that they were to turn up again over the coming days.

Scarce Swallowtail (underwing)

A couple of interesting bees turned up too, and I think the one on the right might just be a white-tailed bumblebee

Furrow Bee

White-tailed Bumblebee?

I can't identify the furrow bee more closely.