Dolomites: Scenery and Unidentified Flying Objects

Some leftovers and afterthoughts on my recent holiday...

Firstly it wouldn't be fair to finish without some sort of tribute to the fantastic scenery, so here's a little sequence of different views we  experienced over the week.  One of the slides is of the Marmolade glacier. where there had been a recent unfortunate tragedy leading to several fatalities:

Obviously this isn't a scientific journal but I do try to identify species as accurately as possible and no doubt get things wrong from time to time.  Here is a selection of items that, for whatever reason, I didn't manage to name with any certainty:

Please feel free to add a comment below if you have any of the answers, or disagree with ant of the identifications I have made on other posts over the last couple of weeks.   I'm sure I should have done better with the butterflies at least.

Still to sort out are the moths we saw in the moth trap on days one and two as I'm going to move on to other themes just now.  I imagine myself going through all the moths later on a winter's day but maybe it needs to be sooner than that before I forget...

Dolomites Days and 5 and 6

Day 5 comprised two walks in the Sella Pass, the second of which finished on the scree at our highest elevation of around 2,300 metres.  Day 6 comprised two main stops at Predazzo and the Park Natural Paneveggio, which also ended up on scree.

The photos are in no particular order and reflect a little my guilt at having largely failed to do much justice to the many flowers.

After an early success with a mountain fritillary at Sella Pass, most butterflies were on the wing apart from alpine heath, which was definitely the most seen butterfly throughout the six days.  However the compensation was a rarity later on in the morning - Warren's grizzled skipper, which was found ovipositing on its main food plant.  

Ring ouzels and nutcrackers were spotted on the way up to the scree and I saw the "mysterious" fly.  It had a clear red band on its waist the likes of which I've never seen before but I couldn't find any shots of similar flies on the internet.

The scree itself was a disappointment as the sun disappeared soon after we arrived and only one butterfly was sighted in passing.  However a few from the group did manage a close encounter with a marmot.

Day 6  was notable for the repeated appearance of a couple of apollo butterflies at a layby en route.  Perhaps even more striking for me was the fleeting sighting of a purple emperor at the same location and the carnelian burnet was arguably the star rarity.

Large ringlet was seen a lot at Predazzo with some other wetland species and large grizzled skipper (in numbers) was a first sighting as we moved uphill.  I again found some bug interest in the form of the rose chafer.

There was a lone sighting of a pearly heath (last photo) showing its similarity to the alpine version.

Once more today, the scree was not yielding any major sightings but we probably saw most of the target sightings elsewhere on the trip except for dewy ringlet.  And the marmot was far more obliging this time, turning up near the refugio during our last refreshment stop.

It seemed like a fitting end to a great holiday.

Dolomites Days 3 and 4

Day 3 was again spent at altitude on longish walk to a refugio in the Rosengarten area.  By contrast Day 4 was at lower level in the Eggental valley.  The sightings are in alphabetical order but I can tell you where each were seen if you request it in a comment.

A first sighting for me was the provencal short-tailed blue plus pretty much all the moths and more exotic bugs but it was the chequered blue and the rosey footman that were thought by the guides to be obvious rarities.  The one that got away was meleager's blue, seen only by our Italian guide, Luca.

People in the group were most excited about the scarce swallowtail and the white admiral plus the standard swallowtail that eluded my camera but I had seen all these before at other locations, notably Bulgaria.  The same is true of the valezina variation of the silver-washed fritillary.  The more normal version was also around the Eggental, nectaring on buddleia.  White admirals were all over the place there, flattering through the riverside trees, but it took a visit to the field of a (rather annoyed-looking) farmer to find one that settled nicely on a flower.

I found it tricky to spot identify the mountain green-veined whites which didn't look very green at all.

Although common here in the UK, we saw only a couple of commas and one small copper during the whole holiday.  If you look carefully at the small copper, you will see it has a number of blue spots on the upper hind-wing.  Apparently, this means it was a third brood specimen.

It was ironic that we saw both purple and white-letter hairstreak, both species I was thinking of tracking down in my return home, as Luca revealed that neither species had been seen on any of his previous tours to the area.  Incidentally, the purple hairstreak, best seen here in oak trees towards dusk was happily eating honeydew on sallows at midday.

Indeed we discussed several examples of wildlife behaving differently from country to country. 

Dolomites Days 1 and 2

Venues covered were Tamion where we were staying, the Costalunga Pass, San Pellegrino Pass and the Passa Valles.  My photographs throughout the trip concentrated mainly on butterflies:

Without cross-checking to previous sightings in Sri Lanka and Bulgaria, I reckoned that almond-eyed ringlet, alpine heath, geranium argus, large ringlet, olive skipper, silver-spotted skipper, sooty ringlet and tatania's fritillary were all first sightings for me.

One we didn't get a photograph of was a large blue that appeared towards the top of the San Pellegrino Pass.  Our group leader Luca commented that he'd never seen one there before.

Alpine Heath and Mazarine Blue were to prove the most common of the smaller butterflies throughout the trip, though even they were considerably outnumbered by the chimney sweeper moth.

The marsh fritillary was the glaciegenita variant found in the Alps and much smaller that the ones I saw in Bulgaria.

The olive skipper is the most common of the greyish skippers, which are often hard to distinguish. The number of spots on the lower hind wing can give a strong clue.

One butterfly we couldn't track down was the scarce copper in spite of the abundance of its food plant.

The bees were slightly differently coloured than expected.  The red-tailed bumblebee had faded to orange-tailed whereas the carder bee was as ginger as a tawny mining bee.

Incidentally, the nutcracker shot was the best I have so far managed.

In the Dolomites

Having heard one last cuckoo calling on 3rd  July (remarkably late for up here surely?) I braved the possibility of rail strikes and flight cancellations I set off for Gatwick Airport on the Tuesday to join a Naturetrek holiday "Butterflies of the Dolomites" the day after.  It didn't start too well as a three hour flight delay meant we didn't arrive at our hotel in the Fassa Valley until 11.00 p.m. local time.  However numerous rewarding sightings followed over the six active days that followed and at times the profusion of things to observe was almost overwhelming.

In spite of the holiday title, there was also a strong focus on wild flowers, a good number of bird sightings and a moth trap at the hotel.  One thing that surprised me was the relative lack of bees given there were so many flowers in the alpine meadows, but there were hoverflies and grasshoppers everywhere and some interesting bugs.  Perhaps due to the dry weather during the day apart from one brief shower, we didn't see many dragonflies and another factor was that many watercourses had dried up completely (global warming) and still water levels were low.

It's the photographs that tell the story best so I've arranged them in slide shows with brief commentaries.  However, I've left the contents of the moth trap to another time as it will take me a good while to identify all the species.

And it wasn't all clambering around and identifying obscurities either:

Resting at a rifugio

Damselfly Dilemma

It's official.  I'm withdrawing the peanut feed from the garden for the time being.  Not only is it impossible to locate it anywhere so that the large birds and ubiquitous squirrel don't snaffle the lion's share of the food, I don't want it hanging from the plum tree encouraging the birds to have a go at what looks likely to be a promising harvest this year.  Further, it's starting to be suggested that removing them hinders the spread of avian flu, which is already hitting the Northumberland coastline.

I did a quick run up to Alnwick on Thursday and we spent some time again going through the meadow by the River Aln.  Red-tailed bumblebees were quickly to be seen as were the expected meadow brown and ringlet butterflies, though this time no skippers and no whites, which have gone a bit scarce generally when I've been out and about.

Instead there were a couple of damselflies, one of which I immediately recognised but couldn't remember the name of - a banded demoiselle.  Another damselfly was in the same area displaying a completely different colour scheme and I spent a while trying to identify it.  It turns out it was simply a female banded demoiselle - though in this case it's the monsieur not the demoiselle who sports the wing band.

Banded Demoiselle

Banded Demoiselle (f)

It is however clearly the lady that has the better camouflage.