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!

On the Bike in Avignon - Day by Day (Part 1)

Day 1

Not far East of the Avignon suburb Les Angles, there was a nice South facing bank where I spent a bit of time.  It was quickly possible to see marbled white and a number of suspected fritillaries and brown butterflies, which turned out to be meadow browns. (I had hoped for gatekeeper!)  Very conspicuous also was the violet carpenter bee, as was the case throughout the whole trip.  I hadn't realised how big their wingspan is in flight. Nearby I noticed a parked lorry whose driver seemed to give me an ironic glance as I cycled past..

Not far down the road the first white admiral appeared, as did a single, slightly dilapidated holly blue, the only time I saw one on the whole trip. 

Violet Carpenter Bee

Holly Blue

In roughly the same area the first painted lady occurred as did the almost inevitable speckled wood, the South European version obviously.

Painted Lady

Speckled Wood

More excitingly the first for me new insect was this scarce chaser, a fine looking thing:

Scarce Chaser

It does occur in the UK but rarely according to AI:- "Threatened, it primarily inhabits slow-flowing river flood plains and marshes in southern and eastern England."  However the cycle track to Aramon was as dry as a bone.

After a break in Aramon I investigated a hilly area near Théziers where there a lot of white admirals and my fist sighting of a male cleopatra while I sat eating cherries bought in Aramon market.  Here, remembering my one off experience near Bordeaux last year, I started to wonder if some the really large butterflies I could see down the hillside were in fact hungarian gliders.  In retrospect however the flight

Spotted Fritillary

pattern and wing shape were wrong, though the upper wing position could easily lead to mistaking the vertical wing stripe of the admiral for the horizontal stripe of the glider. I hope that makes sense?

On the way hope I took a rest on a lone bench near Avignon and was eventually able to identify a spotted fritillary, which was particularly interested in the orange reflectors on my bike.  It must have been feeling amorous.

I was keeping an eye open for the South facing bank near Les Angles again but all of the vegetation had been cut back and I remembered the lorry driver from earlier.

Day 2

This was the day that I planned to tour all the gardens I could find in  Avignon, partly because this proved a successful approach when I visited Bordeaux last year and partly because I was looking to find at least some shelter from very strong winds gusting up to 40 mph.

Unfortunately none of the Avignon parks I visited had much to offer the naturalist although the Jardin des Doms is a big project with potential (and was the most windswept) and I elected not to join the hordes of tourists visiting the Palais des Papes.

What I did find however was a very nice piece of flower meadow sitting for no apparent reason next to a car park near the Chemin des Canaux cycle track.  Here there were a lot of small coppers for whom the mating season had clearly begun, making it easy to spot the difference between the males and females.

Male Small Copper

Female Small Copper

I don't think I've ever noticed this gender difference before.  The male is well darker.

Common blues were also mating and less easy to catch up with as constantly on the move and a few large skipper were also sighted.

However, the one that got me really going was a scarce swallowtail, drifting repeatedly around the sight.  I have seen them before but seldom and did not know that they were to turn up again over the coming days.

Scarce Swallowtail (underwing)

A couple of interesting bees turned up too, and I think the one on the right might just be a white-tailed bumblebee

Furrow Bee

White-tailed Bumblebee?

I can't identify the furrow bee more closely.

On the bike in Avignon - Overview

Last week I managed five days of cycling and nature watching in the Vaucluse area of France, during which I covered the following excursions:-

Day 1 Avignon - Via Rhona - Théziers and return

Day 2 Avignon parks circular

Day 3 Orange - Avignon via Via Venaissia and Via Rhona

Day 4 Beaucaire - Cavaillon (on  EuroVelo Route 8)

Day 5 Same as day 1 but continuing on Via Rhona to include part of the Pont du Gard Greenway

Part of the idea here was to visit some areas where there was an admittedly very remote chance of finding a two-tailed pasha. Unsurprisingly it never materialised.

Conditions overall weren't ideal.  Temperatures were high, rising to 35C on Day 4 and there was a persistent strong northerly breeze, which on Day 2 was gusting up to 40 mph. hence the decision to stay local, also avoiding a widespread train strike.

Marbled White

It was interesting to note that on each day, certain butterfly species dominated.  So Day 1 and Day 5 were definitely the days of the marbled white and the white admiral. Apart from the common whites, Day 2 heavily featured the small copper, and to my initial delight, scarce swallowtail (then seen on each subsequent day) while Day 3 produced a large number of painted ladies.  Having made so much effort to see one in Madeira, it was ironic as well as pleasing that Day 4 was dominated by cleopatras.  All days also produced a species of insect I hadn't seen before.

Generally though the number of sightings decreased over the later days as understandably there were many repeats, and frankly because my increasing level of exhaustion made me less keen to stop at every hint of a sighting.

For more specifics on each day, see subsequent posts "On the bike in Avignon - Day by Day."

Slovenia Day 5

By the end of Day 4 we had relocated to our second hotel at Pokljuka, which is a mountainous area in the North West of Slovenia.

The pattern of the day was similar to Day 3, with meadows in the morning, though at higher altitude and a woodland area later on.

Some of the scenery was spectacular and we found some good areas resulting in sightings of dark green and marsh fritillary, marbled fritillary (again), finally a male mazarine blue, sooty and purple-edged copper, a large skipper, and this time a definite woodland ringlet.  One south facing meadow proved particularly prolific.

It was actually as we were moving on to the woodland area that we came upon a new blue - the alcon blue showing quite well next to the path.

Alcon Blue

In the woodlands, we also scored nicely, viewing silver-washed fritillary, marbled fritillary (again) and several commas as well as the white admiral, not to mention a couple of mating false heath fritillaries.

Silver-washed Fritillary

White Admiral

So another fruitful day, sufficiently rich in butterflies that I didn't pay much attention to other bugs or bees!

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. 

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 4

A brighter start to the day meant we saw a nettle tree butterfly on the front wall of the hotel as well as the black hairstreak I reported yesterday.

Today we visited a number of meadows, a small river valley and did an upland forest walk mainly for those interested in orchids.

At one point a number of large birds turned up flying high above the crags- short-toed eagle, honey buzzard and black stork.

In the meadows it was business as usual chasing the fritillaries and blues.  The black-veined white was increasingly abundant.  In one of the meadows, an elderly lady was seemingly out collecting herbs, though I wasn't quite clear what for.  In some areas herbs are cultivated to make herb teas.  Sometimes it was hard to get good shots of the butterflies.  However I rather like this one of a fritillary below, which makes the butterfly look some kind of weird early aeroplane with a massive wingspan.

Heath Fritillary

The second wee valley was interesting as there were mostly small shrubs next to the stream. here the white admiral came into its own and we saw several.  We also caught up with southern small white, comma, green-veined white.

By now I had decided to play it quiet on the flowers to avoid confusing myself even further but tagged along on the orchid walk as I was starting to get quite bad hay fever.  I thought I'd look out for birds but there was nothing much of note apart from some red-rumped swallows.  We did see a ghost orchid but I thought the red helleborine more attractive.  A signpost indicated the existence of wildcats and apparently they are far from extinction in Bulgaria.

As yesterday, I've left a couple of gaps in the slide show for you to guess at because I'm not sure of them:

Arles Holiday - 20th June

Arles is mainly known for its Roman history and architecure, but what attracted me there were the few van Gogh landmarks and the nature, under which label the main declared targets were bee eater, wallcreeper and white admiral and Bath white butterflies.

Principally with birdlife in mind I rented a bike from the hotel and made for the Marais Du Vigueirat via the cycle track along the navigation channel and Mas Thibert.  The waters of the former looked distinctly carpy and sure enough a couple of anglers were out using notably heavy float tackle that looked more appropriate for pike or catfish - or perhaps to deal with a strong current.

White Admiral

Shortly after stumbling by complete accident on Van Gogh's famous bridge, which in fact appears to be a reconstruction as the original was further upstream, a white admiral flew straight in front of the bike and settled to pose for a photo as a Bath white fluttered nearby. So that, to my surprise and delight, was the key butterfly targets sewn up within an hour or two!  In spite of the name, the Bath white is not present in the UK.

Further down the path something similar happened when a black kite lumbered over in one direction while a purple heron glided along in the other - both first sightings, although both were pretty much expected.  By this time I had already spotted an egret plodging in the paddy fields (rice is grown in the Camargue) that I thought was a little egret, which proved correct as I was soon in a position to compare the three egret varieties.

The experience at the reserve was mixed as, in spite of much research, local guidance and looking around, I did not see the bee eater.  However I did see:

• a beaver in close-up
• a fox running along the wooden path with a vole in uts mouth (twice)
• cleopatra butterfly
• a dragonfly clutching a white butterfly (didn't know they attacked butterflies!)
• an unidentified fritillary (not pearl-bordered)
• great white egrets and little egrets, allowing closer comparison
• cattle egrets, though they were showing more interest in the Camargue ponies than the bulls
• many carp swimming around on the surface of the lake (as below but there were far more than you can see)
• more herons including squacco heron
• marsh harriers
• turtle
• several lizards
• white stork
• magpies all over the place, more kites of both kinds, several wall butterflies, tree creeper, long-tailed tits.

I wondered if there was a reason why the cattle egrets preferred the horses to the bulls.

On the way back, I also noticed what I thought at first was a black bee, but was probably a flying beetle (leatherjacket). I reckon I saw in total eight new species today, the most in one day since I went to Minsmere in 2011.