A Good Year For Butterflies...

As far as I'm concerned, it's definitely a good year for butterflies.

I've had my eye on the developing nature reserve at Chopwell East Field.  Over the winter I noticed it was being grazed by highland cattle and wondered what the results would be this summer.  I eventually revisited last Tuesday to find another abundant supply of butterflies.

In the more Southern area the initial accent was actually on moths as around seven five-spot (I think) burnet moths were found nectaring on knapweed, with a similar number of shaded broad bars showing up as well.

Five-spot Burnet

Shaded Broadbar

Again the dominant species in terms of numbers were meadow brown (some already very worn) and small skipper but also seen were large white, green-veined white, comma. small copper, and small tortoiseshell.

Comma	Green-veined White
Meadow Brown (worn)	Small Copper
Small Skipper	Small Tortoiseshell

I took a little detour into a promising field the other path and noted similar activity.  But on the way back I stopped to photo what I suspected to be a white-tailed bumblebee when it was chased off by another small butterfly that turned out to be a white letter hairstreak.

White-tailed Bumblebee

White Letter Hairstreak

This was a considerable surprise as I have never heard of a white letter hairstreak being reported there and I do not believe there are any elm trees.  It is however clear that there have been more of them about this year.

To trump it all  I achieved a longstanding ambition the day after when i managed to get a couple of distant snaps of purple hairstreaks in the oaks by one of the viaducts at Hamsterley Mill.  Unfortunately they weren't in great condition.

Purple Hairstreak

Meanwhile the first butterfly has been sighted on the buddleia in the front garden.  It was a red admiral.

A Good Year For Butterflies?

Last weekend I visited J&J in Drerbyshire and on the Sunday we took a visit to Carsington Water.  I'd been there before but more on the look out for birds.

In spite of a little rain and a few overcast periods, there was little difficulty in finding butterflies, though my first positive sighting apart from hoverflies was actually a common blue damselfly. 

Common Blue Damselfly

Meadow browns were all over the place but it was particularly pleasing to me that there were also a good few gatekeepers - surely the first time I've seen them in the UK since I was a youngster in Nottinghamshire.

Gatekeeper (underwing)

Gatekeeper (upper wing)

Confusion with meadow brown is possible but the gatekeeper has a double 'eye' spot on the underwing and clear orange colouring on the lower upper wing, which the meadow brown does not.

Almost as good was when J pointed out that there were small coppers.  These have already been reported in the North East but especially good to get after a I messed up the first photo opportunity.

Small Copper

Small skippers were again numerous and we also saw two small tortoiseshell and a few commas and ringlets

Comma

Ringlet

The notable absentees today were common blue (again) and small heath.

We had a quick look at the lake but didn't see much of interest.  I thought I spotted a little egret but it seems to be a juvenile.

Egret

After two hours we hadn't got very far and I spent an annoying twenty minutes trying to catch up with a very mobile sedge warbler, J's camera battery having given out.  In the end I got half of it as it played hide 'n' seek in the bushes.

Find the sedge warbler!

Small White and Green-veined White

There were some large whites at times too.

All in all, a very enjoyable visit

Hunting For Butterflies

A lot has been going on!..

About ten days ago I took a last trip to Pathhead Nature Reserve for a late attempt to find the dingy skipper.

It was unsuccessful although I did see large numbers of meadow brown, good numbers of small skipper plus a fair few small heath and a couple of (I think) six-spot burnet moths, most of which were to be duplicated in subsequent trips elsewhere.  A notable absentee was common blue and perhaps the strangest sighting was a common carder bee that was so heavily bleached by the sun that it was almost indistinguishable.

Small Heath

Common Carder (bleached)

In the preceding fortnight there had been several sightings of patchwork leafcutter bees and always on the same flower which I'm not able to name but it was an obvious favourite.

Patchwork Leafcutter Bee

This turned out to be the start of a good for finding butterflies...

Bordeaux Day 5

My original tour of the parks of Bordeaux ended with a brief visit to Jardin Botanique but I was tired by then and there was so much to see I decided to revisit it in detail.

By the Sunday of my stay, the temperature had sunk to a mere 29C and the morning proved cloudy.  The result was that few butterflies were to be seen but this was more than compensated for by the appearance of various other invertebrates.

It was still quite early when I came upon my first ever pantaloon bee, so-called because of the workers' massive pollen sacs. At first sight it's hard to make out the pollen sacs against the yellow background of the flower.

Common Pantaloon Bee

This species does occur in the UK but isn't present in the North. By chance I later saw another one near the hotel I was staying in at Belvedere.

Shortly afterwards I came across a form of narrow-winged damselfly.  There were plenty of ponds and as a result more common carp, this one looking particularly spooky.

Narrow-winged Damselfly

Spooky Carp

Narrow-winged damselfly is a genus rather than a species but closer identification may not be feasible. Also in the wee ponds were a large number of water snails that seemed to be drifting around pointlessly but presumably collecting algae or similar.

The Jardin Botanique is pretty massive and must have a massive gardener.  These are his wellies:

Wellies

Amongst the flowers again I found at least four bees on a single blue flower head.  One in particular caught my attention:

Seven-spined Wool Carder Bee

I knew enough to realise it was probably a wool carder bee but I owe the precise identification to a couple of experts on iNaturalist after I captured it in a bugbox.  Wool carder bees are so named because they gather their nesting material from furry plants.  They are seldom seen in the North East and this is not the most common European example as far as I can gather.

Lastly I couldn't resist this item and suspected straight away that it was actually a wasp.

Scoliid Wasp

Again scoliid is not a precise species as there are several varieties of the scolia family.  There is one UK example, the large hairy flower wasp, but this isn't it.

At this point I decided to turn my attention to more cultural affairs, namely the Wine and Music Festivals that were both taking place along the left bank of the Garonne before returning the hire bike.

There was a minor sequel in that the day after, before setting off to the train station on my way home, I took a quick walk around the Place des Fleurs by the hotel (not over many fleurs by the way) and found this furrow bee.

Furrow Bee

This has yet to be identified.  To me it looks similar to the great banded furrow bee that does occur in the UK but there are doubtless other possibilities. 

Overall...

In spite of several frustrations, Bordeaux provided a great few days of nature watching including species that I expected to see and many that I didn't.

And the cycle tracks, once away from the City Centre were great too.

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.

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.

Bordeaux Day 2

As temperatures rose to the mid thirties, I thought a tour of the parks of Bordeaux would be my easiest option, though I managed to make it less easy by making a series of navigational errors en route.

Of eight parks visited by bike, the two most fruitful were definitely the Parc de la Béchade and the Jardin Public though almost all had some attraction to offer.

I hadn't yet managed to tangle with any bees of insects but the Parc de la Béchade quickly turned up an interesting new bug - a sulphur beetle - and later on, poorly photographed, an old friend from the Dolomites, the violet carpenter bee, was found in the Parc Bordelais though this time not with its head totally dowsed in pollen.

Sulphur Beetle

Violet Carpenter Bee

In flight the sulphur beetle looked as if a small yellow flower petal had taken to the wing - quite weird.

Geese weren't particularly on my hitlist but there were a couple of strange looking items amongst the canada geese at Parc de la Béchade:

Mystery Goose

I spent sometime wondering what it was but probably just some sort of hybrid.

I always have a soft spot for egyptian geese (seen at Parc Bordelais) but got a serious shock to see the next couple at the Jardin Public.

Egyptian Geese

Barnacle Goose

So yes, there were a couple of barnacle geese, natives of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle and winter visitors to Northern Britain strutting around in 30C + temperatures in a Bordeaux park.

And there were some butterflies. After seeing one male brimstone yesterday, it was good to see several  at Parc de la Béchade.  In fact there were about 10 of them flying around the same plant.

Brimstone

They were seen every day afterwards in all locations.

Speckled Wood

Speckled Wood were seen on two or three occasions in the Southern aegeria variant also in Spain this February.

While offering some lovely flower beds the Parc de l'Ermitage only produced a frustrating chase to reveal a single common blue.  In fact I couldn't understand why thjere were so many flowers and so few pollinators.

However the biscuit was again duly taken by the Jardin Public, which produced my first ever sighting of a geranium bronze.

At first I thought it was a pea blue until I saw the photo.

Geranium Bronze

These are no longer rare in Europe but it definitely made the day for me.

The Jardin Public produced one other sighting which is still under investigation:

Under Investigation

Initial suggestion is that it belongs to the genus of blue-banded and digger bees, of which I have never heard.  It's not a very revealing photo so I doubt if a more precise description will emerge.

Bordeaux Day 1

Having reached Bordeaux in sunny weather, I noticed that it was far bigger and the River Garonne far wider than I had anticipated. 

My first cycle was to to the Réserve écologique des barails to the North of the city, where the bike proved its use in enabling me to find a large flower meadow relatively quickly.  First sightings were of a number of clouded yellow, this one just about to fly off:

Clouded Yellow

The clouded yellow was to prove one of the most sighted non-whites of the whole holiday and appeared again on my way back via the lake, this time providing a good view of the underwing:

Clouded Yellow (underwing)

The Barails site also produced two first sightings of the year with painted lady (several) and small copper:

Painted Lady

Small Copper

Neither species re-occurred during my stay. Notably almost everything was landing with wings closed, possibly due to the ever-rising temperature which touched 30C as the day drew on.

Thee was a frustration in that I also spotted a number of much smaller blue butterflies and a hyperactive day-flying moth that refused to settle - a theme that was to recur throughout the week.

The day should also have included a trip to the Parc du Majolan which was mysteriously closed, though I did catch sight of a male brimstone and the only peacock I was to see all week in the nearby woddland.

Also closed was a park and woodland area on the Western side of the lake.  And this is supposed to be the tourist season!

I ended up having a much-needed beer in the popular Darwin area of Bordeaux, which led to an interesting variation of thieving sparrow behaviour:

Thieving Sparrow