Spain Day 1

As mentioned briefly last time, I spent last week in holiday in Northern Spain. It was a birdwatching trip, Wallcreepers and Cranes in Northern Spain with Naturetrek.  The overall verdict would have to be that, while the cranes were available in massive numbers, the wallcreepers proved distinctly elusive and I only got one distant view.  Inevitably though, I saw a lot of birds that were new to me.  I was also attracted by the fact that previous trip reports indicated that there could be a few butterflies...

Day 1 - 11th February

Painted Lady

It became quickly clear after landing at Zaragoza that Spring weather was in the air and we we quickly saw the first griffon vultures, red kites and others from the vans.  After stopping at Daroca, we took our first walk up to the Torre de San Valero, and evidence of butterflies was soon apparent as we saw small white, large white and bath white flying around early on.  As we got near the tower a good number of painted ladies and red admirals.  My suspicion has been for a while that painted ladies can overwinter in the UK and you'd think these must have done so in Spain.

An even better surprise was the appearance of a scarce copper butterfly within the tower wall. I also found a beefly and a bee the apps have identified as Gwynne's Mining Bee, which seems credible enough to me and one I've never seen before.

Gwynne's Mining Bee

This is by no means to say there were no birds around and the ones I saw (others saw more) were crossbill, crag martin, short-toed treecreeper and some singing woodlarks singing above the power lines.

However, the biscuit was duly taken by another butterfly when we saw a queen of spain fritillary sunning itself on a boulder.  This again surprised me but it appears it can be on the wing throughout the winter months.

Queen of Spain Fritillary

We then set off for our first hotel at Allucant on the Laguna di Gallocanta, which is a massive, shallow salt lake and the key winter destination for cranes.  At 1,500 metres above sea level, winter temperatures still applied but during daytime were still well above those being experienced in the UK.

Having not managed to get any decent bird photos, I was well pleased when we came across some corn buntings in the fields near the hotel and in fact they were all over the trees on the way to the laguna.

Corn Buntings in field

Corn Bunting in tree

I reckoned I could see several blackbirds in the trees but in fact they turned out to be spotless starlings (never heard of!) and indeed you can just about make out the iridescence in the snap I got of this one:

Spotless Starling

And what of the cranes?  Well, we could just about make out a few obscured in haze at considerable distance towards the South end of the lake, which was to be our next destination 

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...

Bulgaria - Day 5

As it was our last morning in Tehsel, I decided to take an early morning walk down to the village where it was reported that eleonora's falcon was being sighted daily in pursuit of hirundines.  Typically it only appeared briefly and I didn't see it and also only heard the serin that was calling nearby.  Later in the day we were also to hear a cirl bunting calling.

Hirundines were around in plenty, as there were througout the trip.  Crag martin, pallid swift, barn swallow and red-rumped swallow were all seen often and the house martins were certainly not confined to residential areas.  In the mountains, alpine swifts were also to be seen.

 Transferring to a new location took us through the lowlands in splendid weather and resulted in a bonanza of sightings though I did miss the ilex hairstreak, which was quick to fly off and my great banded grayling was

seriously out of focus.  I was happier with the photographs I managed to get, though not with my recording skills which meant there were again some things I couldn't identify and others where identification may be inaccurate.

Of course there is a lot of variability between genders and amount of wear.  I got one shot of the map butterfly that looks nothing like as it should and this black-veined white is a good example - so worn that it has become semi-transparent.                   
The grizzled skipper is  a good example of an identification problem in another way.  In the Balkans there are something like twenty different varieties as opposed to our one, so at times you have to give up unless there is an expert to hand. 

It was a day of headlines and star acts.  There were numerous beautiful scarce coppers in the morning, and even when we settled down for a picnic lunch, there was a giant beetle almost the size of my brown rat scurrying around. Unfortunately I forgot the name but it only occurs within the Southern Balkans in Europe.

We caught up with both eastern festoon and in the afternoon swallowtail, the latter being first recorded on video before it finally came into land:

In one meadow, the elusive large blue was spotted.  It disappeared, hard to track because of its dark pattern, but I hung around and felt quite proud when it reappeared and I managed to follow it for thirty or forty yards before it landed. Just afterwards, we came across a male cardinal fritillary, the biggest fritillary in the Balkans.

This was quite exciting but I think that the best photograph I took at the riverside location was this shot of the beautiful demoiselle as the detail has come out so well:

The whole group was excited when, further upstream, we found a group of whites and blues 'puddling' i.e. absorbing salt from the muddy banks.  As you can see there was a whole mass of them, including some of the rarer species like escher's blue and chapman's blue, all in a great profusion:

Apparently only male butterflies do this.

Then further along, we found a couple of bushes that were swarming with silver-washed fritillaries, including the grey female form (valezina).

It was quite a day indeed: