This year's treat

For almost all of the 20 years that I have run a moth trap, and indeed going back very much further to my schooldays' butterfly collecting, I have been blessed by a regular series of surprises and delights.  My teenage capture of the rare Charlotta variety of the Dark Green Fritillary butterfly was perhaps the first although I had been rewarded by First Hawkmoth, First Fritillary and other highlights well before then. Later I chased down a magnificent iridescent blue and green Peacock Swallowtail in Indonesia and explored the little rainforest, rich in insects, created by the unending spray from the Victoria Falls.

This year's treat - because they have become almost annual events - is late in the day but certainly worth the wait: a gloriously prolonged encounter with a Two-tailed Pasha, Europe's largest butterfly species, on a mountain-top in Provence. Checking the European Butterfly Bible, I found it described as a confirmed 'hill-topper' and this exactly chimed with the rocky peak above Roches Blanches in the Massif des Maures where Penny and I found ours.

I thought at first that the best picture I would be bringing you would be the third one, above - the sun-drenched edge of rock where the big, and that stage unidentified butterfly perched after a prolonged and dizzy dance when we first disturbed it. It soon took off again but luckily, by my age, you know from experience that most butterflies are territorial. It disappeared over large stands of Arbutus unedo, the Strawberry Tree which is its caterpillar's food plant. But within a minute it was back. On its third circuit it settled more conveniently for me and - snap! - I got my pictures. 

Is it exclusively a 'hill-topper' though? Or could it be that butterflies are harder to spot when you are clambering up mountains or slithering down them, rather than the open space of the summit where you have time to rest and look thoroughly around. There were other nice butterflies there including the Wall Brown immediately above and several very restless Clouded Yellows flashing around. We also set up a Large Mountain Grasshopper - well-named and perhaps the inspiration for La Fontaine's reworking of Aesop's famous tale of fecklessness and prudence.

La Fontaine would also have been very familiar with the Blue-winged Cricket which zipped about on hot days - I filmed this one below at our local bus stop and then isolated the stills - not exactly a triumph of photography but I hope that it gives the idea.

Other discoveries during our five days in the lovely village of La Garde Freinet included the Large White and Small Copper below, plus the millipede and beetle whose exact ID I leave to passing experts, if any.

A final pleasure of the holiday was the little Musée des Papillons in St Tropez whose incredibly good-value admission charge of only two Euros admitted you to a lovely little townhouse whose former owner collected butterflies from all over the world and then used them to supplement paintings of his native Provence.  Reached by following butterflies inlaid in the pavement of an alley, it also had some terrific pictures of butterfly collectors in the old days.  Merci beaucoup!