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