Here's the French Connection, part 2: whites and yellows. I've been puzzling over how to divide my holiday hoard and apart from the simple division between butterflies and moths, the easel method seems the best way.
The whites and yellows don't usually furnish much excitement, with even Clouded and Pale Clouded Yellows pretty predictable once you cross the Channel, albeit very nice to see for a Yorkshireman whose native county doesn't get them that often. Sorry the Clouded Yellows in the big photo above are a bit blurred, but one was just taking off after an amorous encounter with the other. Here's the PC:
No surprise also to find Small and Large (left pic) Whites, which go everywhere, like the looks of Robert Browning's
My Last Duchess (I only know that because my younger son learned it at school and recites it with brilliant malevolence).
But here's the treat: a Wood White whose flight is as dainty as any among the butterfly world. It's a delicate creature altogether, with unusually shaped wings - narrower and more tightly-curved than the usual, broad spread of butterflies its size. There are various continental versions but my
butterfly Bible Tolman & Lewington doesn't show any of them reaching as far as the Dordogne. Mind you, that also applies, just, to the Cleopatra, a lovely version of the Brimstone with bright orange blotches on the sulphur-coloured wings; and I definitely saw one of those near the excellent castle of Beynac. But we were driving so I can't prove it with a photograph here. So here's another Wood White, a male I think because of the more pronounced sooty tip to the wing:
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