Throw of the dice

Look, it's a Leeds moth! A Green Carpet. Last night I lit the trap for the first time since 19 August, thanks to holidays, a family wedding and - since we settled back - wind and rain. Here's another one; a Black Rustic. We're back to the good old dour and pastel English shades...

But I'm not done with France, and today features the solitary member I found in the Dordogne of that noble family, the Fritillaries. I have a personal history with these going back to 12, when I caught my rarest butterfly, the Charlotta version of the Dark Green Fritillary, at exactly the spot above Kynance Cove in Cornwall where Prof E B Ford chased and caught one of the few Monarch butterflies seen in the UK. You can read more, if so inclined, on an ancient blogpost; and here is the actual butterfly with its beautiful silver underwing lozenges, below a standard DGF.

This is by way of introduction to my French Fritillary, the Knapweed, which lived in my clover-field hunting ground. It's as lovely as all its kind, with plenty of the glowing (and dark) spots which led to its name, from the Latin Fritillus, for dice box. It shares this, for the same reason, with the plant family which includes the beautiful Snakeshead Fritillary, now gradually colonising our garden.

The Knapweed isn't found in the UK but is very like the Glanville Fritillary, a rarity named after Eleanor Glanville, whose knowledgable hunting for butterflies in the late 17th and early 18th century led her son to dispute her will on the grounds that she was mad. Unfortunately, he won. Sorry the pic of the Knapweed's topwings is a bit blurred; I was over-excited, I think. Here's the underwing, with slightly better focus.

Singing the blues

It sounds sad, but some of my happiest moments on holiday were spent poised over small butterflies as they sipped nectar in the French sun, all with their wings tightly closed. I was willing them to open, because these were the Blues, jewel-like butterflies which give vivid snatches of my favourite colour in flight, as above, but very seldom show any at rest, as below.

I marvel at the number of photographs in existence which show Blues displaying their top wings, and at the patience which must have been involved. So why was I happy? Because (a) it was blissfully warm and (b) I was sure that eventually one of the pesky insects would succumb.

Hooray! A few did. The beautiful trio above are only Common Blues (I am fairly sure; regulars will be familiar with my blunders), but aren't they lovely? And here's the female, below; not as fabulously-coloured but a beautiful, dainty butterfly especially when recently-hatched and still with its delicate white Laura Ashley petticoat rim.

There are enormous numbers of Blues on the continent, many differing only slightly, not only in their patterning but in their names: eg we have Oberthur's, Agenjo's, Rippart's, Higgins' and Gallo's Anomalous Blues, all named after experts who presumably spotted their (tiny) anomalies from the norm. There's even a Martin's Blue, I'm delighted to say, which lives in North Africa on stony slopes and may be flitting around Colonel Gadaffi even now.

The others I saw included the Silver-studded Blue, named after the small dabs of sparkle on its lower wings' outer rim of spots like teenagers' eye makeup, as in the picture above (double-click on it to see more closely). This butterfly has an interesting relationship with ants which conduct its caterpillars into their nests to pupate. 'Without ants,' says my Butterfly Bible, 'larvae become very agitated and usually die.'

And lastly, on the way to Bergerac airport, I saw this female tailed Blue, obligingly showing not only the colour of her forewings but her neat little tails. I assumed that she was a Long-tailed Blue but her underwing - right - suggests that she's actually an interesting butterfly called the Geranium Bronze, a 'Blue' accidentally introduced to the Balearics in 1990 in a consignment of pelargoniums from South Africa. It rapidly spread to Spain, has been recorded in Rome and Brussels, and now seems to be settling in France. Patience is usually vindicated. And that's the end of my holiday Blues.

High time we saw a moth

The butterfly invasion of this blog isn't over yet, but today is dedicated to my French holiday moths. Without a light trap, there were few of these, but the tally isn't that bad, considering. The Penny Trap, for example, which consisted of Mrs W cooking in a brightly-lit kitchen with the shutters open and wearing her very fine butterfly T-shirt, attracted this Small Elephant Hawk, a species I last saw in Leeds when I was 12 and John Armitage, the marvellous natural history curator at the City Museum, directed me to its caterpillars on willow herb growing along the ring road embankments in the Meanwood valley.

Penny also found this small white creature on the loo floor; but otherwise the haul is drawn from day-flying moths enjoying the clover-type crop which our neighbour M.Bortolin grew for his goats, as previously described. I've already shown you the star, the Crimson Speckled, but here are two more which are satisfactorily rare in the UK: the Pale Shoulder and the Marbled Clover, the latter well-named.

I didn't see any Burnet moths, but here's their faithful chum the Burnet Companion which was the most common moth in the field. Also a delicate Latticed Heath, which I remember mistaking over-excitedly for a Duke of Burgundy Fritillary at around the time of the Meanwood caterpillar forays. And thirdly, a shy Straw Belle, given away by its excellent, feathery antennae.

A mystery moth penultimately - even Charlie Fletcher, our omniscient county moth recorder who identified the Marbled Clover for me, isn't sure about this, or the white loo one. Any random French moth expert passing by would do me a kindly service by solving the riddle. Meanwhile I will Google patiently away. Update: Aha! Thanks to Richard in Comments, I now know that this is a micro, also found in the UK, called Pyrausta despicata. You can read more about it here. Many thanks, R.

And finally, a characteristically blurred picture of that whirring little non-stop flyer, the Hummingbird Hawk, in a garden in Bergerac. This isn't the worst photo of my holiday moths, mind. That honour goes to my non-existent picture of a lovely Jersey Tiger which I focussed-in on in our porch, but just as I pressed the camera button, it took off.

No guillotines here

I think we all know what happened to the aristocrats in the French Revolution. But those of the butterfly world were apparently spared. One of the joys of crossing the Channel is that you are very soon seeing Swallowtails, both our exceedingly rare British one, Papilio machaon, and the continental Scarce Swallowtail which is striped like a zebra.

You get a bit blase, to be honest. I didn't initially stir when machaons swooped round the cottage's pool, but Penny went speedily into action when a Scarce Swallowtail crash-landed in the water. Alas, it couldn't be saved and here are its sad remains, right, contrasted with the machaon fluttering on a buddleia above.

I was really excited, though, to find this Purple Emperor, in the middle of lunch at a cafe in the exceptionally pretty village of St Jean de Cole. I have often admired the Emperor's purple sheen in collections but never seen one alive and never expected to. In the UK at least it is notorious for keeping to the top of trees.

It can be tempted down with over-ripe fruit, however and although that didn't feature in our delicious lunch, French emperors may have more refined tastes than their British counterparts. Certainly this one spent a lot of time in the cafe's neat little herb and vegetable garden. It reminded me of the French translation of Peter Rabbit which adds toute sorts de legumes to Beatrix Potter's original text, along with the comment: C'est un peu dur, les radis, may si appetissant.

Familiar friends - plus a new one

As with the white and yellow butterflies, so with the browns. Our cottage in France was in the heart of the countryside and we were surrounded by Meadow Browns (the two top pictures), the occasional Wall butterfly basking in the sun (small pic on left) and Small Heaths tripping across the roughly-mown lawn (next two pics below). Sorry my instructions re pics are rather confusing but I'm trying to cram as many in as possible as a record of the butterflies I found.

Whether these are continental versions of our familiar friends, I am not sure, but they look exactly the same to my (somewhat untrustworthy) eye, although I briefly thought that I'd found an unusual variety in this one, below. In fact the pronounced ribbing is the effect of low sunlight. It illustrates well how the wings of a butterfly resemble the sail of a yacht when stiffened by wooden battens or strakes.

(Either that, or it's some sort of Ringlet. I'm hoping an expert on European butterflies may chance across these French bulletins and put me right when wrong, as my moth buddies do).

There was one novelty, though, which initially I took to be a White Admiral because of the white barring of its topwings - which alas, it hardly ever shows when at rest. The best effort I can make at showing them is below but it was taken at long range and is characteristically blurred. There are actually two butterflies in the pic, an amorous pair which I felt it would have been unfair to pursue too closely. And there were a lot of brambles.

I think that this mystery insect is a Woodland Grayling; certainly it liked shade and one of the several which lived around the cottage was always to be found under a clump of trees where the owner kept his pile of chopped wood. Like the UK Grayling, it is expert at camouflaging itself when at rest; not only by folding its wings tightly and slipping the forewing down as far as possible, but by turning to cast the smallest possible shadow when it was caught in the sunlight. Normally it tried to settle in shade.

Finally, in this notably picture-infested post, here's that Wall butterfly again, taking off. Blurring rules, OK.

Blancs et jaunes

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:

Little pretty

Righto, here we go on my holiday treasures. I've been trailing the fact that most are butterflies, but let's start with a moth. It's a real bobbydazzler and one which I never expected to live to see.

Welcome to the Crimson Speckled, which has the status of rare immigrant in the UK and has only been seen here about 100 times since 1900, with two anni mirabili in 1961 and 1990 when over 30 and 25 were recorded respectively.

Mine caught my eye in the big, unhedged field of a sort of clover which lay on the slope below our rented French cottage and which was my happy hunting ground for butterflies and a handful of day-flying moths, including this one. Every day, our neighbouring farmer Armand Bortolin harvested a strip to feed his goats which make prize-winning cheese, but there was enough to keep me occupied during our week's stay. Isn't French weather nice, btw?

The Crimson Speckled's botanical name is Utatheisa pulchella, the second name meaning 'pretty little one'. I cannot rest fully content, however, until I encounter the Beautiful Utatheisa, an even rarer relative with pink hindwings and orange blotches on its forewings. This is highly unlikely. Only one has ever been seen in the UK, on Skokholm island off Pembrokeshire in 1948. The experts think it got there somewhow from its native North America where the species is well known, feeds on a plant with the excellent name of Rattlebox and has been the subject of some fascinating research - see here. But let's have another peep at pulchella, looking rather as I imagine Caiaphas the high priest did at his ministrations in the Temple...

Holiday peep

A few posts ago, I mentioned my son Olly's kind despatch of special butterfly stamps from his holiday in Spain. Now here are two more, on a card waiting for Penny and me when we got back last night from our own holiday, near Bergerac in France. The handsome one on the left is a British butterfly too - the High Brown Fritillary. There's narry a hope of finding one of those in Leeds, But I still remember gasping with excitement when I first saw one as a small schoolboy on the brackeny skirts of the British Camp on the Malvern Hills.

It wasn't such good news for the fritillary because in those days I had a net. In France. it's all been camerawork, and there was plenty to photograph (quite apart from scenes of chateaux, les plus belles villages de France and les plus belles diners et dejeuners de nos vies). Here are a couple of tempters, above and below. It's going to be a bit of a butterfly week on the blog, because who can resist those colours? But there will be some good moths as well - and one or two other, mostly creeping, things...

Admirals ahoy!

More good news, after the re-appearance of a Southern Hawker here: the Red Admirals have arrived in force at last. It's only a few days since I was worrying that this year's unusual weather might have done something nasty to their life cycle; but we had four swooping over the buddleia in the sunshine, with as many Peacocks and a fluttery couple of Large Whites vying for the honey-scented swags of purple flowers.

The Red Admiral is the earliest butterfly I can remember, because my mother was very fond of it - I think, again, because it was the first to which she was introduced as a child. The Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell are lovely too, and I am now sure that we will see all three regularly between now and the onset of autumn. I'm not so sure that I can pick between them, but we are lucky to have such colourful common wild creatures on an island whose fauna and flora tends to the sober-looking side. Like the pleasant but pastel Large White.

Red Admirals - a distortion of 'admirable' which has nothing to do with the sea - sip nectar voraciously. They were really going at the florets yesterday, plunging in their long probosces and so intent on the process that I could creep quite close. I even took a film; and although I'm not (yet) a master of close focus in movie-making, it gives the idea. I'm hoping to add it but I've just spent ages trying to upload it without success and must go now. Maybe another attempt later...

Yay! I think it's worked...

Yes it has. It isn't terribly action-packed, but I'm excited.