Slovenia - Day 2

On our second day the early risers in the group saw quite a few birds around the hotel and I did manage my first ever definite photo of a white wagtail while waiting for off.

White Wagtail

Generally though I couldn't see much of what the others saw in the way of birds during the whole trip and took a mental note to get an overdue eye test once back home again.

Eventually we set out to look for fresh meadows near the village of Hrastovalje, not far from the farm where the previous night's impromptu birdwatching session took place.

Obviously the main target was butterflies and on and after an upland walk, we found plenty to look at including clouded yellow, plenty of scarce swallowtail, holly blue, more skippers, wall brown, mallow skipper and grizzled skipper.  Particularly pleasing for me was my first encounters with Reverdin's Blue and Eastern Short-tailed Blue: 

Several grizzled skippers were seen near a puddle in the path we used, where there also there were a large number of wood whites puddling. The interesting thing here is that their black spots have shown up far larger than they appear to the naked eye:

Wood Whites puddling

I had mixed feelings when we came across the first small blue I've ever spotted but arrived on the scene late and only got very blurred and useless shots of it...

However the most spectacular photo opportunity, possibly of the whole trip, was presented by the newly-hatched European Swallowtail that flattered around the van when we got ready to move on and hung about for ages as if posing for the cameras.

European Swallowtail

While moving on to the afternoon venue, we saw a couple of white storks from the bus that even I couldn't fail to see.

White Stork

The next venue proved to be a disappointment.  The meadows looked promising and one or two butterflies briefly appeared but after twenty minutes the clouds moved in and, although it never properly rained and stayed warm, butterflies were scarcely to be seen at all.

I think the only one a I noted was a marbled white that remained stoically attached to the same bit of knapweed for ages with wings closed:

Marbled White

When in such circumstances others turn to birds I turn these days to insects but would be hard put to name any of the ones I saw apart from the nine-spot and red wave moths.

Various Bugs

I feel I should be able to identify the bee, which I first thought was a nomad but, having considered colletes and yellow-faced bees, I don't have a clue.

Amongst other animals we came across during the day were a pool frog, a green lizard and a wall lizard.   

Pool Frog

Green Lizard

Wall Lizard

After dinner we returned to the farm area to look for Scops Owls, which duly did not turn up, though we did see a kield skimmer (dragonfly), raven and dulbentan bat and, learning from past experiences, I decided video was the best media to catch the non-stop flight of the hummingbird hawk moth.

Humming Bird Hawk Moth

Altogether quite a productive day the talk at dinner was already about the relative shortage of butterflies compared to previous years due to poor weather throughout Europe..

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.

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:

               

Thursday 5th May

I'm playing catch up again here.

Not much more happened mid April until I departed for my planned holiday in Naples.  This should have included a couple of nature outings, but inconsistent weather and poor local cycling limited the scope to get outdoors a little.  The main trip I did manage was to the Parco Virgiliano along the Naples peninsular at Posillipo. This is pretty much an urban Sunday stroll but on the 24th, cooler

Stone Pines

temperatures and occasional showers perhaps reduced visitor numbers.

The approach to the park is lined by rows of massive conifers that I was pleased to identify as stone pines, though I had less luck in identifying subsequent local species of tree apart from some almond willows and some lemon trees already in fruit.

During some intermittent spells of sunshine, a couple of wall butterflies and a red admiral showed themselves but, curiously, it wasn't until I was sheltering under a disused ice cream stand that I started to pick out some of the bird species.

A serin parked itself on top of an unpromising bare treetop a few yards away and shortly afterwards, a pair of hooded crows settled briefly in roughly the same area.  Apart from a very dubious possible

Callistemon

sighting at Balcary some time back, this is the first time I've seen them, so it was a pity they couldn't stay to pose for the camera.

I had been seeing some sparrow like birds creeping around in the hedgerows and tree foliage. Whilst again sheltering briefly next to the ladies toilets (!), I found I was seeing them again while looking up into a shrub with spiky red flowers that I believe was a callistemon.

A little bit of book work in my German Book of European Birds revealed that it was in fact an italian (cisalpine) sparrow, an

Italian Sparrow

interesting species or sub-species depending on your point of view.  The opinion of the German Book of European Birds is that it is a cross between a house sparrow and a spanish sparrow (Weidensperling). Little matter - it basically looks like a house sparrow with a totally brown head.

More italian sparrows and serins turned up at different times and I also identified a couple of mail blackcaps. They looked a bit slimmer and more agile than UK blackcaps, but I decided they weren't sardinian warblers (Samtkopf-Grasmücke). These matters get very complicated in mainland Europe!

Two days later I was visiting Pompeii and, although not on nature alert, was pleased to see a swallowtail and a couple more wall butterflies on the wing, as well as a few wall lizards creeping over the remains.  I didn't allow myself to check out the birdlife, as there is more than enough to see at Pompeii in a day.

Altogether a pleasing result for what threatened to be a non-nature holiday.

Spot the wall lizard