On the Bike in Avignon - Day by Day (Part 2)

Day 3

The day started at Avignon Station, where I had a bit of spare time before catching a train to Orange and noticed there was an interesting bee feeding on some lavender.

Digger Bee

I haven't managed to dig into digger bees much but a suggestion on iNaturalist 
of urbane digger bee seemed fairly definite at the time. One slight problem is that anthophora urbana occurs in North and Central America so I think digger bee is as near as I'll get.

At Orange the idea was to launch North to Uchaux but ultimately I didn't fancy the road and turned back.  Before I did, I discovered another flower meadow, this time quite a large one, where several butterflies could be seen.  I very quickly found some dingy skipper (yet again after a near blank last summer) but also a skipper that was different.  Past experience in the Camargue (and for a change my memory) came in handy and I soon realised it was a mallow skipper.

Dingy Skipper

Mallow Skipper

There were a good few spotted fritillaries around and one kindly posed to allow me to get a good shot of the upper wing

Spotted Fritillary

Also seen but not photographed at this sight were clouded yellow, ringlet and brimstone, plus an annoying hairstreak that I narrowly missed. I wondered about ilex hairstreak but didn't get a good enough view.

After turning back to the Arc de Triomphe in Orange (yes there is one!) I joined the Via Venaissia aiming to join the Via Rhôna North of Carpentras. About 10 km out of Orange I encountered a farm garden where there were a few marbled white (which always seemed to be a sign that others were present) and stopped to check out what looked like large fritillaries. In fact they all turned out to be wall browns, painted ladies or spotted fritillaries. In fact the spotted fritillary proved to be the only fritillary found. Anyway I did this time get a good shot of another scarce swallowtail that appeared.

Scarce Swallowtail - Upperwing

One interesting point here was that a lady exiting the farm by car stopped specially to tell me to lock the bike up (which was no more than five metres away) as the area was often patrolled by "bandits" who would escape with it high speed given the chance.

Unfortunately the remainder of the ride proved to be somewhat disappointing.  The rest of the Via Venaissia led mainly through farmland with little to note and a lively Mistral to face. At the Via Rhôna I encountered rather arid country, with the occasional outburst of painted ladies where there were a few flowers.  Otherwise the main butterfly sightings were individuals blown across my path at high speed in the wind, not to be seen again.

At one area I investigated as promising I thought that I had found an interesting moth, which actually proved to be a couple of short-horned grasshoppers caught "in flagrante delictu."  A good job I'm having an eye test shortly!

Short-horned Grasshoppers

I was beginning to reflect that the lack of moisture in most areas was having a clear effect on sightings. There was not a drop of rain the whole week as temperatures gradually rose.

A little way North of the Île de Barthelasse, I did actually find a nice looking neglected path with plenty of vegetation and a few marbled whites.  What I actually sighted was largely a repeat of those seen in the morning including, annoyingly, a repeat of mystery disappearing hairstreak.

In the end I had to settle for a cleopatra and a pretty banded demoiselle.

Cleopatra (underwing)

Banded demoiselle

Day 4

In temperatures up to 35C, Day 4 turned into more of a survival exercise.  Starting out from Tarascon, I took a run across the North of the Alpilles.  This was firmly the day of the cleopatra as both males and females turned up repeatedly especially in the morning.  They were also extremely reluctant to settle but in the end I managed to get a video capturing a bit of both and showing the colouring.

Cleopatra

Matters were made considerably worse when I realised I had an hour less than planned to catch a train at Cavaillon, and so was forced into cycling at as much pace as I could manage for the last 25+ km.

I did stop briefly for a rest and had a bit of a surprise when on a rare plant I found a stripey bee that appeared to have a bloated white abdomen. It clearly noticed me and took off towards me and started flying from right to left repeatedly in what appeared to be some sort of threatening behaviour before finally moving off.

Unfortunately the camera couldn't help with even video evidence but I was able to establish that it was  a wool carder bee.

Day 5 

Increasingly tired and interested in creature comforts I decided to roughly repeat the run from the first day as it passed through the best area for nature.  The result was perhaps inevitably that, having dispelled any notion of finding the hungarian glider, I saw pretty much the same species - white admiral, marbled white, spotted fritillary etc. but with one major difference.

Regiscola Bidens

At the spot West of Les Angles where I first stopped on Day 1, I found up to twenty massive insects circling an area of broken bushes.  They were black, about as long as a dragon fly, thicker than most caterpillars, and had two bright yellow stripes.  They also had antennae suggesting they were bees or wasps

On the way back later in the day I encountered a French Natural Biologist who told me they were regiscola bidens, i.e. mammoth wasp, a species that predates on the rhinoceros beetle.  Whilst it looks highly dangerous, it is actually very placid and rarely stings. Apologies for the poor photo.

I got chatting to the French chap who, as well as complaining about the local authority's failure to protect the area, for example by cutting it as on Day 1, told me that it held over 500 distinct species, of which over half had special protection status.

There was something about that that made me feel I had made the right decision!

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.

On the bike in Avignon - Overview

Last week I managed five days of cycling and nature watching in the Vaucluse area of France, during which I covered the following excursions:-

Day 1 Avignon - Via Rhona - Théziers and return

Day 2 Avignon parks circular

Day 3 Orange - Avignon via Via Venaissia and Via Rhona

Day 4 Beaucaire - Cavaillon (on  EuroVelo Route 8)

Day 5 Same as day 1 but continuing on Via Rhona to include part of the Pont du Gard Greenway

Part of the idea here was to visit some areas where there was an admittedly very remote chance of finding a two-tailed pasha. Unsurprisingly it never materialised.

Conditions overall weren't ideal.  Temperatures were high, rising to 35C on Day 4 and there was a persistent strong northerly breeze, which on Day 2 was gusting up to 40 mph. hence the decision to stay local, also avoiding a widespread train strike.

Marbled White

It was interesting to note that on each day, certain butterfly species dominated.  So Day 1 and Day 5 were definitely the days of the marbled white and the white admiral. Apart from the common whites, Day 2 heavily featured the small copper, and to my initial delight, scarce swallowtail (then seen on each subsequent day) while Day 3 produced a large number of painted ladies.  Having made so much effort to see one in Madeira, it was ironic as well as pleasing that Day 4 was dominated by cleopatras.  All days also produced a species of insect I hadn't seen before.

Generally though the number of sightings decreased over the later days as understandably there were many repeats, and frankly because my increasing level of exhaustion made me less keen to stop at every hint of a sighting.

For more specifics on each day, see subsequent posts "On the bike in Avignon - Day by Day."

Out and About Again!

After my visit to Teesside, I set off again in a Westerly direction on Thursday.

Plan A was to catch up with the fritillaries at Mabie Forest near Dumfries as I had done last year at about this time last year with some success.  

Unfortunately the good weather had already broken in South West Scotland to be replaced by dull and windy conditions so that not a single fritillary was seen. In fact there were hardly any pollinators at all and the only one that appeared regularly was the speckled yellow moth.

Speckled Yellow

We encountered exactly 15 of them all told.

The only other two items of note seen were harder to identify and I was initially only able to find suggested genera.

 

Genus Oedemera?

Genus Orthotaenia?

The only UK representative of the latter genus is the dusky marble moth. which can however be confused with the dark strawberry tortrix so you can take your pick...

However Oedemara Virescens, the false blister beetle, is common in the South of Scotland and so seems a good bet. Anything rather than another 'impossible to say' verdict!

On Friday I returned to England in rather better weather to take part in a course on conducting survey counts near Hadrian's Wall with the Butterfly Conservation "Making Peatlands Work for Lepidoptera" project.

The practical session was a bit of a mixed bag in that we only saw one of our target species - a total of five green hairstreak - in a one hour session. But we did see some interesting things including two bees I was pleased to have definite sightings of.

Unfortunately I was busy changing my hearing aid and only got a quick glimpse of the first one - a moss carder bee, which was thought to be a queen starting a nest on the edge of our marked walk.  I may have seen this on a couple of previous occasions but have not been able to confirm.

In terms of butterflies there were a few small heath (first for me this year) on the borders of the site we were surveying but I was supposed to be counting large heath and duly registered a nil return! A few large butterflies were seen in flight but were thought to be painted ladies. Otherwise we only saw whites in flight and the only one I saw close up was a green-veined white.

On the other hand we did find a couple of caterpillars.

Drinker Moth Caterpillar (underside)

Oak Eggar Moth Caterpillar

Also seen was a nice example of the Silver Y Moth which was captured in a bug box.

Silver Y Moth

However the best for me was the last - a heath bumble bee, which I definitely have never seen before:

Heath Bumble Bee

It was also good to see that numerous peatland flower species were doing well including hare's tail cotton grass, common cotton grass and cross-leaved heath.  There were probably others but plants were not for me a priority for the day.