Bordeaux Day 3

With day time temperatures scheduled to hit a maximum of 36C I was a bit cautious about my plan of heading towards the sea at Lacanau and reckoned to do about half of the approximately 120km round trip.  In the event, thanks to an early start and a good day in the saddle I managed about three-quarters of it, turning back a good way past St Helene.

It was quite a long way to the National Park I wanted to suss out and the main thing I noticed meanwhile was the abundance of some yellow flowers on the outskirts of Bordeaux.

Common Evening Primrose?

Suggestions by AI favour Common Evening Primrose, though this sighting was actually timed at 8.31 a.m. Hmmm?

Meanwhile also a sign advertised the presence of a rare mammal, the 'genet commune' in the Parc des Jalles  Apparently it's totally nocturnal so i didn't look for it.

Anyway there was an early success on reaching the Park when I came across one of the target species - a pearly heath, not a great discovery but it's as near to the UK as I've ever seen one. 

Pearly Heath

Other heaths seen were decidedly common.

After that things frankly got a bit frustrating.  I stopped at a promising looking spot a few miles South of Salaunes, where there was clearly a lot of action.  A number of brown butterflies were fluttering around and arguing with some speckled wood but they refused to settle properly.  I wondered distantly about gatekeeper but could not prove my hunch.  After a while an impressive marbled white spent a long time working the path edges but without landing at all.

So the only ones things I captured on camera were small skippers and, a bit later on, some burnet moths.

Small Skipper

? spot Burnet Moth

I think all the several skippers I saw on the day were small.

From this point on it got even more frustrating.  I notice that the photos I tried to take tended to be poorly focused just as the butterflies' behaviour got extremely skittish and now wonder if these factors were the result of the increasing heat which duly exceeded the 35C mark as promised.

Having just passed Salaunes (where there was thankfully a water pump) I noticed a number of blues zooming around but couldn't manage to get anything like a decent view.  They definitely weren't commons, having a brighter shade of upper wing and dark spots on the underwing.  I wondered about nazarine blue but I think they were smaller than that.

So I rode on thinking to stop at St Helene, seeing continued brimstone, the odd clouded yellow and occasional annoying marbled white until I could smell the sea air and eventually realised I'd overshot the turnaround point.

It was worth it though as my last stop was for another group of fast-flying blues.  After much patience, 

I finally did see one settle for several minutes.  So I managed to identify it as I sat sprawled in the roadside grass with the thing virtually between my feet!  

In the end it was nothing special or new - a short-tailed blue and my only disappointment now was that I didn't get a better shot of it.

Short-tailed Blue

So mystery solved - always assuming that they were the same as the ones at Salaunes! We will never know.

Bulgaria Day 6

Unfortunately that was the end of the good weather.  While it sweltered in the UK we found it distinctly chilly at our new base at Moravsko Selo 500 metres higher between the Pirin and Rila mountains.  From here on, our opportunities were increasingly limited by wet weather.  This isn't the complete disaster one might expect as some butterflies simply sit it out with wings closed but remain visible.

Corn Bunting

I ventured out before breakfast and saw a red-backed shrike and, pleasingly, a corn bunting in full song at the rear of the hotel.  Others managed to hear and see a common rosefinch, but it ceased to appear  once the rains set in after the first two days and I missed it.

We visited a fast-flowing river in a deep gorge where numerous short-tailed eagles and several other birds of prey flew by, including a griffon vulture.  At distance it would have been very easy to mistake it for a buzzard.

The accent was a little more on birds here. Great for me was my first sighting of the golden oriole, albeit at distance.  We were to hear them on numerous occasions during the rest of the holiday.  We also tried to tempt a middle-spotted woodpecker to show itself but without real success and a spanish sparrow turned up on a telegraph post.

On the river there was a group of cormorants behaving in typical fashion, but with notably whiter chests than the North European version.

I did manage to photograph some butterflies (see inevitable slideshow video below), of which the most exotic were probably the female chequered blue and Rippart's anomalous blue.  I missed some others - meleager's blue, false eros blue and balkan marbled white, although the latter is apparently hard to distinguish from the normal form.

Also prominent was the appearance of one of the two very large tortoises that live in the Balkans but I forgot the exact name.

We moved not far away to a rather unpromising looking riverside spot where there was a good bit of litter.  Apart from clouded yellows and a few lizards, the scarce swallowtail was sighted but was not settling.

We did eventually managed to catch up with it after following a longish path, nectaring on some large thistles. This area was also quite good for skippers, including lulworth and Oberthür's grizzled skipper (apparently) and we also got a sighting of Lang's short-tailed blue.

On the way back, it was nice to see some common gliders in the low trees at the top of the bank.  Apart from painted lady, this is the only butterfly that I also saw in Sri Lanka where it is known as the common sailer.

We did attempt another expedition but this had to be abandoned quite quickly when the rain closed in and we huddled under a mulberry tree,  As it was in fruit, I got my first ever chance to eat a couple.

Bulgaria Day 1

I signed up for thje "Flowers and Butterflies of Bulgaria" with Greenwings, looking to relive some of the excitement of last year's holiday in Sri Lanka with less strain and travel.  I knew that I would keep up with the flowers even less than in the UK but that interesting bird and insect sightings would also follow.

Short-tailed blue

After arriving at Sofia airport we stopped off at a nearby river and meadow in sunny weather and the sightings began immediately as clouded yellow and marbled white were quickly seen and were to remain a feature at virtually every location.  Lesser fiery copper and scarce swallowtail soon followed as did short-tailed blue and pearly heath.  These were all first sightings for me but somehow I was most pleased with the blue, which does occur rarely in the UK - irrational, I know.

Nearer the river we heard a nightingale and a green woodpecker, got a good view of an essex skipper (the one I didn't find at Birkdale Forest last year) and our guide Simeon captured a banded demoiselle damselfly in his butterfly net.  Unlike Sri Lanka, it is allowed in Bulgaria to net butterflies. We also had much more freedom to stray from the established paths.

Amongst other butterfly species to turn up at this location were comma, ringlet, meadow brown and common blue.

Banded Demoiselle

Large Skipper

Pearly Heath

Our next stop was at an area of upland heath meadow surrounding a quarry and the commonest species was the rosy starlings that whizzed around all over the place.  They didn't seem quite as pink as the one I saw in Sri Lanka last year but this may have been explained by seasonal differences in colouration and the bright sunlight.

Adonis blue at rest

This was the only time we saw a bee hawk moth, an impressive imitation indeed and I was very pleased to see the adonis blue in flight, as I had heard how beautiful it is.

Other butterflies I saw were the nyobe and spotted fritillaries, great banded grayling, bath white, small heath and small skipper.  More adventurous members of the party got some good bird sightings but easier was the bee eater on the telegraph wires directly next to the road.

We also had some dragonfly sightings including common darter and broad bodied chaser as well as a huge unidentified wasp.

After that we headed off on a rather long and windy journey to our first base at Tehsel in the Western Rhodopes.