Butterfly Review

The first weekend in August I was in Krakow to celebrate my son's fortieth birthday.  Obviously the time was mainly dedicated to celebrations of various kinds.  Apart from a chance sighting of a peregrine falcon in the town centre, we did however end up in the zoo.

I'm not a great fan of zoos but bever having visited one since childhood, I did actually rather enjoy myself checking out this and that and confirming my son's impression that the eagle owl had been mis-translated into English on the sign - as I could see it was correctly labelled as Uhu in German.

I won't go into boring detail but here are a couple of the better photographs:

Pigmy Hippopotamus

Leopard

On arriving back home last Tuesday, it was delightful to see several butterflies fluttering around the buddleia bushes.  

I think I have to reverse my pessimistic forecast about butterfly numbers this year as it's apparent that the later flying species have done very well.  Not to be seen before I left, peacocks have arrived from nowhere in large numbers and I see that the Big Butterfly Count has registered a big increase in the number of red admirals.

Here however, the comma has definitely been the butterfly of the year, appearing in twos and threes several times a day in good sunshine.

Peacocks and Comma

Also very gratifying is that I have now seen three holly blue passing over the garden.

The loser in all this may be the small tortoiseshell, which for the first time has been appearing less frequently than the comma.  

On a brief cycling rest stop at Ryton Meadows last Thursday, I spotted two small copper and a small heath.  It may be that the serious fire that devastated much of the woodland scrub last year has had a positive result in allowing the heathland grasses and flowers to reclaim some territory.  It will be interesting to see how this land gets managed in future.

More recently, I have faced a couple of identification challenges at home.

A green dragonfly has turned up on three occasions to sun itself in the garden.

Southern Hawker?

It's definitely a hawker and I think probably a Southern rather than a Common Hawker but the difference between the two is small and I'm no expert.  Interestingly the wings are almost completely transparent.

Likewise the moth I found snoozing on the garage wall looks to be a grey carpet but I couldn't find an exact image match and there are similar species.

Grey Carpet?

It's still one of the most enjoyable times of the year for me when butterflies appear in numbers, weather permitting.

Wednesday 22nd March

A little epilogue to my Sri Lanka trip.  Here's the photos I didn't manage to get myself, rolled into one.

Many thanks to Martin Warren for supplying these shots:

Sri Lanka Day 5

Fortunately the weather held out much better and we were able to play catch up in the Riverstone area.

Red pierrot

On getting up for breakfast we caught sight of a couple of mongooses crossing the approach road and soon a changeable eagle owl was keeping a careful eye on us until mobbed by crows.
Our departure for the hills was delayed by the arrival of a wedding party but when we finally got there, I was able to catch up on some of the photos I had missed out on the previous day, notably red pierrot, great eggfly and painted sawtooth though the blue mormon again proved very elusive.

One of the group noticed a small yellow, so I made sure to take a quick snap and it was later identified by our leader as a spotless grass yellow, the first time we sighted this species.

This was all while foraging around the same area as yesterday but after lunch we walked up the moorland a startling viewpoint.  We quickly saw an endemic species of frog and soon I had finally got an albeit poorish snap of the leopard butterfly that I missed out on several times in the Sinharajah Forest.

Banded peacock

Around this time a large butterfly was seen flattering around a bush with a strong flash of blue.  I immediately got a bit excited thinking of the bluebottle. It turned out to be a banded peacock and kindly landed for a good while, allowing us to appreciate how spectacular it was. There are not many butterflies that are totally green and the interesting thing is that it wouldn't normally be seen in this area at all as it belongs more to the plains of the dry zone. As we were starting to appreciate, climatic conditions in Sri Lanka are becoming less predictable. Overall, this was thought to be to the top spot of the day.

A new bird turned up, the red-wattled lapwing, though two of us were sure we had seen some sort of pipit instead.  A little later I added a pretty lemon pansy to the chocolate pansy I had seen at the hotel earlier.

Another interesting sighting was a plumbeous silverline, in that there was a long debate at the end of the day as to whether it may instead have been a common sliverline. This was strange in that, after just a quick look in the books, I had no doubt whatsoever that it was the plumbeous version!

Unfortunately we were again caught by a shower after visiting the viewpoint, a sheer drop of several hundred metres over the edge of the rock face.  So we were forced back to the van, at least having had a lengthier spell of time in the area.

Heading to our next destination at Wasgamuwa, we stopped at a bridge over a river where we caught sight of a Sri Lanka keelback watersnake hiding in the bankside as well as a couple of spectacular damselflies. Trying not to embarrass a couple of ladies bathing, we also checked out another bird of prey, which turned out to be another crested serpent eagle (juvenile) so presumably it hadn't spotted the snake.

Just short of Wasgamuwa, we took a walk alongside a watercourse where several birds were visible. Not really sure why I didn't get the camera out but perhaps it was because I was already familiar with the likes of purple heron and the various egrets from my trips to France.  Prominent also were whiskered tern, asian openbill, black-headed ibis and some sunbirds.  Or maybe I had just decided it was the butterflies that made the day.  It can't be emphasised too much that it's nigh impossible to take in everything on a day like this.

Anyway, here is a movie of what I did take in: