Slovenia Day 7

Our last day in Slovenia was slightly curtailed by the need to get back to Llubljana but still proved productive.

Starting the trail back east we stopped off at a location where there were a series of upland meadows.

The first one was the one where we saw the most, managing to add chalkhill blue to our somewhat diminished list of blues, and Amanda's blue was also active.  Something of a nuisance was a scarce copper that kept flying around without settling much. It turned out there were several of them in the area and so were hard to miss.

Chalkhill Blue

Scarce Copper

The pearly heath was seen so many times we had more or less started to ignore them! A mountain green-veined white was also seen, looking even darker that the example seen yesterday.  Silver-washed fritillaries were present in good numbers and the lesser marbled fritillary was also observed again.

Pearly Heath

Mountain Green-veined White

Throughout the trip we also saw some small heath. One omission I thought we might see but never did was the bath white.

On the bug front, these four-banded longhorn beetles seemed determined to boost their own population:

Four-banded Longhorn Beetles.

We stopped at another place but saw no butterflies we hadn't already seen. by a river I did however find this bee, which we think to be a carpenter bee - possibly the violet carpenter bee.

Violet Carpenter Bee

Scarlet Tiger Moth

The yellow appearance of the thorax is actually a heavy dusting of pollen.

Then as we got back to the van, a scarlet tiger moth was literally on it, just above the wheel hub.

Also seen is the nine-spotted moth, which in the last couple of days became prolific.  At our last woodland stop, it was the only thing we saw but in massive numbers.

Nine-spot moths

Here they have formed a weird crucifix shape.

After that we headed for the airport through a heavy thunderstorm...

Canal du Midi - Part 2

The third day on the road was devoted to a round trip to Minerve, one of the oldest villages in France.  However I was at least as much interested in the huge gorge that stretches out to the West, as I reckoned there was a chance of seeing some wallcreepers, a bird I have wanted to see for a long time but isn't too predictable and varies its nesting sites.

It wasn't to be.  In spite of extensive work with the binoculars, all I could see apart from a few crows and other hirondelles was a good number of crag martins flying around the gorge, plus a fleeting sighting of a red-rumped swallow.  Notably the River Cesse was totally dry, so one suspects this may have had an effect. The absence of birds of prey was disappointing as some quite exotic species have been seen here in the past.

I got a bit distracted into looking at butterflies again in a flower meadow, where a wall brown, a grayling and another brown argus were to be seen.  The latter is interesting in that the black spot on the upper wing is encircled by white. This is normally a characterstic of the French version of Spanish Argus but other aspects of this worn specimen don't suggest any further similarity.

Wall Brown

Grayling

Brown Argus

After still not seeing interesting birdlife in Minerve itself, I managed to catch up with a couple of chalkhill blues 'at it' by the roadside. Again there are several subspecies to choose from but I think they were pretty much the standard offering.

Chalkhill Blue

After that the wind got up and I headed for the swimming pool in the B&B at Olonzac.

Long-tailed Blues

Day 3 was another canalside run through to Narbonne, some delightful scenery breaking up some of the more monotonous sections. Again the butterflies got active once the afternoon was underway, and there were a few nice common blues on the hook in the Canal just past Paraza. Then, on passing a lock just after Le Somail, I noticed some faster flying blues homing in on a single plant. They didn't settle very long so photographs were hard to get but the distinctive underwing pattern shows that they were long-tailed blues - even though one was hard put to see the actual tail, which is basically just a bristle.

A little later I managed to identify at least one bird, a black redstart.  It was surprising not to see more of them in the wine producing areas which are common around here.

Riding past a woodland area next top the canal, I then caught sight of a swallowtail which didn't settle.  At first I thought it wasn't the stadard variety as it was flying rather delicately.  Past the Port de la Robine, I followed another for ages without it settling before I finally got a shot of a delapidated specimen, clearly a standard swallowtail.  Something similar was happening with coppers, as I thought, but when I got one to settle on the path, also just past the Port de la Robine, it proved to be, as far as I could determine, a sparsely marked spotted fritillary.

Swallowtail

Spotted Fritillary

Following a cross country diversion away from the Canal, I managed to see a couple of decent-sized fish, probably dace or carp but they bolted under a bridge as soon as they saw me and couldn't be induced to re-emerge by flicking a few sundry titbits into the water.

Canal du Midi Part 1

A good deal of time has elapsed since the last post, the reason being that I have spent a long time trying to verify the butterfly sightings on my latest trip abroad, a cycle tour along the canal du midi from Carcassonne to Beziers. I've actually been back just over a week.

Overall, the most surprising thing about the trip was the extent to which butterflies dominated the nature sightings. Apart from the hirondelles, there were remarkably few birds around and other cyclists said the same.  There were scarcely any ducks until nearing the Mediterranean and the only land animals I saw were a couple of goats playing on a woodpile in a timber yard.  I wondered whether the hot, dry weather was at least partly responsible.

The first day was a circle to the Lac de la Cavayere.  All the streams leading into the lake had totally dried out and I gradually worked out that the best place to look was the point where the streams flowed (or didn't flow) into the lake as there was here at least enough moisture to sustain some flowers.

This is where identification problems begun and it's possible I have made the odd error. I was quickly able to identify wood grayling*, clouded yellow, silver-washed fritillary, wood white, white admiral, bath white, spotted fritillary and brown argus. However I encountered some very bright blues that were larger than common blues (also present) and didn't open their wings on settling.  My thinking is that they may have been adonis blues although they lacked the white markings on the underside of the bottom wing.  One I photographed I suspected was more likely to be a chalkhill blue.

Apart from a heron, I did get a quick sighting of a firecrest at the far side of the lake.

Bath White	Black Tailed Skimmer	Adonis Blue?
Chalkhill Blue?	Brown Argus	Clouded yellow**
Meadow Brown***	Wood Grayling*	Silver-washed Fritillary
White Admiral

Spotted fritillary

Wood White

Notes:

* Apparently it is however impossible to distinguish wood grayling from rock grayling without detailed examination

**  The pale form opens up the possibility of Berger's Clouded Yellow or Paled Clouded Yellow, both of which are present at this time of year.

*** Not quite the same as our own version - probably the hispula form

The second day was a trip to Homps along the Canal du Midi and started in light rain - hopefully a bit of relief for the forest fire that could be seen burning in the hills behind Carcassonne.  On the way out of the town there was a chap setting up to fish for carp with some large boilies and heavy tackle, unsurprisingly suggesting that there are large carp in the canal.  But I never at any stage saw them feeding or topping.

Apart from a few finches in a tree on the other side and butterflies already noted yesterday, the only sign of wildlife today was the large number of snails that were clinging to plant stalks along the bankside.