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. 

Bulgaria Day 6

Unfortunately that was the end of the good weather.  While it sweltered in the UK we found it distinctly chilly at our new base at Moravsko Selo 500 metres higher between the Pirin and Rila mountains.  From here on, our opportunities were increasingly limited by wet weather.  This isn't the complete disaster one might expect as some butterflies simply sit it out with wings closed but remain visible.

Corn Bunting

I ventured out before breakfast and saw a red-backed shrike and, pleasingly, a corn bunting in full song at the rear of the hotel.  Others managed to hear and see a common rosefinch, but it ceased to appear  once the rains set in after the first two days and I missed it.

We visited a fast-flowing river in a deep gorge where numerous short-tailed eagles and several other birds of prey flew by, including a griffon vulture.  At distance it would have been very easy to mistake it for a buzzard.

The accent was a little more on birds here. Great for me was my first sighting of the golden oriole, albeit at distance.  We were to hear them on numerous occasions during the rest of the holiday.  We also tried to tempt a middle-spotted woodpecker to show itself but without real success and a spanish sparrow turned up on a telegraph post.

On the river there was a group of cormorants behaving in typical fashion, but with notably whiter chests than the North European version.

I did manage to photograph some butterflies (see inevitable slideshow video below), of which the most exotic were probably the female chequered blue and Rippart's anomalous blue.  I missed some others - meleager's blue, false eros blue and balkan marbled white, although the latter is apparently hard to distinguish from the normal form.

Also prominent was the appearance of one of the two very large tortoises that live in the Balkans but I forgot the exact name.

We moved not far away to a rather unpromising looking riverside spot where there was a good bit of litter.  Apart from clouded yellows and a few lizards, the scarce swallowtail was sighted but was not settling.

We did eventually managed to catch up with it after following a longish path, nectaring on some large thistles. This area was also quite good for skippers, including lulworth and Oberthür's grizzled skipper (apparently) and we also got a sighting of Lang's short-tailed blue.

On the way back, it was nice to see some common gliders in the low trees at the top of the bank.  Apart from painted lady, this is the only butterfly that I also saw in Sri Lanka where it is known as the common sailer.

We did attempt another expedition but this had to be abandoned quite quickly when the rain closed in and we huddled under a mulberry tree,  As it was in fruit, I got my first ever chance to eat a couple.