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!

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.

Bulgaria Day 8

The last day of the holiday threatened to be a total rainoff.

We set off along another upland track similar to the one on Day 3 but it only lasted for half an hour or so. We had seen a sombre tit and a lesser spotted woodpecker and I got a photo of a brown argus before the heavens opened.

A strange butterfly

It looked like it would be in for the day and so we headed for the nearest town to do a little sightseeing instead.  We did see one butterfly there, though not of the kind we had been looking out for.  One of the group needed some dental treatment so we had lunch in town too, which all took a while.

Out of nowhere it then brightened up and so we headed off again, scouring some roadside meadows.  The butterfly sightings started to come slowly but surely and when we entered a small meadow near a river, there was half an hour when they were turning up in almost the same quantities we had experienced during the middle of the week.

We moved on to another couple of meadows towards the end of the day, but things were already quietening down somewhat.

Most were things we had already seen but there were some additions, notably idas blue, sloe hairstreak and eastern baton blue.  I think though the joy at seeing a good number of butterflies on the wing again that was more important than hunting down new species.

Bulgaria Day 3

We walked along a path that traversed a mixed hillside, so that there were good views into the trees on one side and opportunities to forage for butterflies on the other. Initially the sun refused to show its presence and the early talk was about whether we would see any butterflies.

Eventually the sun did oblige and by the end of the morning, we had in fact seen quite a profusion of butterflies. I was greatly exercised by the difficulties of identifying the blues and fritillaries and can only hope that I have called them all correctly.

A couple of early sightings were of rock bunting (new to me) and a nutcracker, which was induced to take up position in a nearby treetop by reproducing its call on a mobile phone.

A relatively early appearance again was the alcon blue, which has an interesting modus operandi.  Its caterpillars issue a sweet liquid that induces a species of red ant to carry them into their nest, which the caterpillars duly parasitise much in the same fashion as the cuckoo. Who'd have thought it of such a pretty butterfly?

On the blues side I was very pleased to spot and identify a holly blue, as I have never tracked one down in the UK. After that a slight complication arose when we came into an area frequented by the nickerl's fritillary as it greatly ressembles the heath fritillary.  By my reckoning and from what more experienced people were saying, I did see and photograph it but looking back on the images I downloaded I wasn't convinced.*

Everyone was also impressed by the brightness of the owlflies that appeared from time to time.

In the afternoon the sights were enhanced by the addition of a slow worm and a small grass snake on an area of rough heathland.

Once again, I've pulled all the photos into a video because of the large number available.  The ones I haven't titled at the end are those I couldn't identify to my satisfaction, so perhaps you would like to have a try?

*Note  After reviewing the photos with a new guide book, I am now convinced that the shots were of Nickerl's  fritillary.  Here's an example that gives a good view of the markings:

Nickerl's Fritillary