East Lothian Butterflies 2023 Part 1

I have been collating the butterfly records from East Lothian for the last 11 years, so we now have good data to see how butterflies have been doing over this period. Of course we only record a very small fraction of the number of butterflies that occur in East Lothian, but it gives a pretty good picture.

2023 started off with a reasonably mild, but wet winter. However, there were a few colder spells and the frosts persisted into April. The year was punctuated with an unusually high number of easterly winds. There wasn't really a lot of sunshine until mid May, when we had a warm, sunny spell, but sadly that only lasted until half way through June! The remainder of the year was rather showery, with continuing east winds. This was only broken by a sunny week in early September and then back to cloud and rain! The first frost around the 12th October saw a sudden drop in the number of butterflies.

The weather can have an impact on the number of butterfly records received. This isn't necessarily because the butterflies aren't out and about when the weather is poor, but may be because recorders are less likely to be out looking for them. It is often the weather from the previous year that can have more of an impact, preventing the adults laying eggs, or heavy rain washing small caterpillars off their food plants.

Some species had a really poor year in 2023, but others did surprisingly well.

The first record I received was of 3 Peacocks seen on the 17th March and several more were seen over the next few days. They had a pretty good year, particularly later in the summer when the new generation appeared.

On 23rd March I received the first record of a Small Tortoiseshell. Nationally there is much concern about the reducing number of Small Tortoiseshells, yet here their numbers have been fluctuating, but not really showing a decline. The number of records in 2023 was just a little lower than the average of the previous ten years.

The third species that overwinters as an adult is the Comma and they had a particularly good year, being seen in high numbers later in the season. The first one was spotted on the 2nd April. It is interesting that these three species have similar life cycles, feeding on nettles as caterpillars and hibernating as adults, yet they each had different success rates in 2023.

The next butterfly to be seen was a Holly Blue on the 3rd April. This was the real success story of 2023, with them being spotted all over the county in good numbers. It seems funny to think that prior to 2019 they were rarely recorded in East Lothian. I received records of 377 Holly Blues last year.

Next were the whites with Small White, Large White and Orange Tips first being seen on the 3rd, 5th and 7th April. These three species all had a good year  with higher than average numbers being recorded. However, the Green-veined White didn't make an appearance until the 19th April and it had the worst year since I have been collating the butterfly records. It is difficult to understand why it did so poorly when the other white species did so well. My only suggestion is that I usually associate Green-veined Whites with river banks and damper areas. Possibly the dry springs that we have had the last two years haven't suited it. Hopefully the numbers may bounce back in the future.

The first Speckled Wood appeared on 7th April. They had a fantastic year in 2023 and were seen in particularly high numbers in early September. It is interesting to speculate why they did so well in a year when the weather wasn't what we wouldn't normally think of as ideal for butterflies.

The Wall Brown has slowly been increasing  in numbers over the last ten or twelve years in East Lothian. However, the number of records peaked in 2021 and since they have decreased again. Nationally there is concern about this species reducing in range and numbers and it had been thought that Wall Browns were spreading north in response to climate change. This year, we received the first record on 25th April with the summer generation being much more numerous than the spring generation.

Small Coppers are never really seen in big numbers. More often than not a male will take up territory on a sunny leaf and fly up when disturbed only to return to the same spot. The first record in 2023 was on 26th April and it wasn't a particularly good year for them, which I can only imagine was down to the weather.

Although Red Admirals appear to be able to survive our winters as eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises or adults, the vast majority of those we see in the early summer have flown up here from continental Europe. However, there are a few early records, which are likely individuals that have found somewhere sheltered to over-winter. Our first record last year was on the 4th May, so it is difficult to be sure where this individual spent the winter! 2023 proved to be a bumper year for Red Admirals with 1421 individuals being recorded. The highest figure since I started collating the records. There were an enormous number of records in the third week of June, pointing to a mass arrival from overseas.

I will continue this on the next post.

Corfu Butterflies - June 2017

This year's family summer holiday was to the Greek island of Corfu. A fantastic place for a holiday with lovely scenery, warm sea and the most friendly, generous people I have ever met. My parents holidayed there in the 1970s and came back with stories about how lovely the people were there and it seems they still are!!

We rented a villa in an olive grove at the north east of the island, above Nisaki. It was built on a steep slope, so there were two stories with the swimming pool build into the hillside at roof level. I thought this would provide a great vantage point for seeing butterflies, but compared with other areas on the island there were not that many there.

I am not quite sure where to start with the butterflies, so here is a summary of what I saw at the villa and in the surrounding area.

We arrived at our villa at about 6pm and I was delighted to see a number of butterflies flying around a small cherry tree by the front door. There was a pair of Large Wall Browns, Lasiommata maera ...

... four or five Great Banded Graylings, Brintesia circe ...

... two Speckled Woods, Pararge aegeria ...

... a Lattice Brown, Kirinia roxelana ...

... and about ten Eastern Rock Graylings, Hipparchia syriaca.

The following day these butterflies were still there, feeding on the over-ripe and fallen fruit and flying up in a cloud each time we walked past. Over the course of the day I also saw a Small White, Pieris rapae, Cleopatra, Gonepteryx cleopatra, Swallowtail, Papilio machaon, Scarce Swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius, Balkan Marbled White, Melanargia larissa, and a Silver-washed Fritillary, Argynnis paphia, flying past the villa, but none of them stopped.

There was a wisteria plant growing at the front of the villa and this attracted Mallow Skippers, Carcharodus alceae, Long-tailed Blues, Lampides boeticus, and a Lang's Short-tailed Blue, Leptotes pirithous.

However, by the fourth day the usual five species disappeared from around the cherry tree. I suspect that the housekeeper had sprayed around the tree to kill the ants, as there was still plenty of fruit around.

The butterflies continued to fly past the villa, but rarely settled. Half way through our holiday I was thrilled to see a Spotted Fritillary, Melitaea didyma, fly past the villa and land briefly on a bay tree. I was frustrated that it didn't stay long enough for a photo, though! However, on our last day a Spotted Fritillary landed near the villa and started laying eggs on a dried up plantain plant.

I had read that the olive groves in Corfu are sprayed against disease, which has had a bad impact on wildlife that would otherwise occur there. I guess that the olive trees around the villa had been sprayed. Elsewhere on the island there were loads of butterflies, which I will write about in my next posts.

Cyprus Butterflies - July 2015

We have just returned from this year's family holiday to Cyprus. We were based in a villa on the outskirts of Pegia, about five miles from the coast at Coral Bay.

Normally, before we go anywhere on holiday I spend ages researching what butterflies I may see, but this year my life was made so much easier by Eddie John's fantastic web site. This has all of the information anyone would need about the butterflies of Cyprus. Eddie runs the butterfly recording scheme for Cyprus and he was kind enough to send me the grid squares they use to record butterflies along with some tips on good places to look for them.

I also bought a copy of The Butterflies of Cyprus by Christodoulos Makris. This is a large book with details of every species of butterfly that has been seen on Cyprus along with distribution maps.


I was advised that July isn't a particularly good month for butterflies in Cyprus because much of the vegetation is dried out at that time of year. However, as I discovered, if you pick your spots then there were plenty of opportunities to see butterflies.

53 species of butterflies have been recorded on Cyprus, but five of those are very rare migrants, so it is probably more realistic to say that 48 species occur on Cyprus. 38 of those species occur in July.

Near the villa was an area of waste ground where there were two large Thyme plants growing. Every time I visited them there were about ten butterflies in that small area. The most common was the Cyprus Meadow Brown, Maniola cypricola.


The upper side of the females has lovely orange markings.


The males are less boldly marked and I noticed that both males and females can be quite variable.

There were also a number of Large Wall Browns, Lasiommata maera, in the area. Superficially these looked quite similar to the Cyprus Meadow Browns and I would have to wait for them to land before I could positively identify them!


And in amongst these two were the occasional Wall Brown, Lasiomata megera.


As well as seeing these butterflies in this area, these three species would also regularly drift through the garden of the villa we were staying in. Several times a day we would also have a Swallowtail, Papilio machaon, fly into the garden and spend several minutes flying around the orange trees. It seemed to be attracted to the trees, but never landed on them.

Long-tailed Blues, Lampides boeticus, were very regularly seen in the garden, but again they never landed or fed on any of the plants.


On our first day a Cleopatra, Gonepteryx cleopatra, flew into the garden and landed on a Hibiscus plant. They are so well camouflaged that I couldn't find it until I disturbed it and it flew off. I realised that I had been staring at it all along thinking it was a leaf! That was the only one I saw in the area.

Meanwhile, back at the patch of Thyme I regularly saw Holly Blues, Celastrina argiolus, and Lang's Short-tailed Blue, Leptotes pirithous. These are becoming much more common on Cyprus than they once were.


Further down the track there was a dried-up stream where I was lucky enough to see a Millet Skipper, Pelopidas thrax. This was the only one I saw on my holiday.


I also saw two or three Pigmy Skippers, Gegenes pumilio, there.


I saw the occasional Bath White, Pontia daplidice, here. It used to be thought that it was the Eastern Bath White, Pontia edusa, that occurred in Cyprus, but recent genetic research has proved that it is P. daplidice that occurs there. The Small Bath White, Pontia chloridice, also occurs there, but I don't think I saw that!


Later on our holiday I was surprised that I hadn't seen any Dark Grass Blues, Zizeeria karsandra. Up until recently these were considered to be a sub-species of Zizeeria knysna, which I regularly see in Spain and the Canary Islands. There they are commonly found on irrigated grass, road sides and by water courses, but for some reason I didn't find them in similar habitats on Cyprus. Eventually I spotted some flying next to a bin in Coral Bay when I had driven in to buy my morning croissants!

There was a thunder storm on our last night and the next morning it was still cloudy. So, I decided to pay a quick visit to the Thyme bushes to see if there were any different butterflies flying in the overcast conditions. The usual species were still flying as usual, but on the track I spotted a Grass Jewel, Chilades trochylus, on a plant in the middle of the track. These are Europe’s smallest butterflies and they are almost impossible to follow when in flight.

 

I had seen a Grass Jewel earlier in my holiday on a trip up to the Troodos Hills. I will try to write posts about what I saw in Troodos, Larnaca Salt Lake and the Movrokolympos Dam over the next few days.

Sierra Nevada, Spain - Butterflies - July 2014

When looking through my butterfly books before we went on holiday to Spain, I kept noticing a little blob on the distribution maps to the east of Malaga. After further investigation I discovered this was the Sierra Nevada, a relatively isolated area of mountains and apparently the second highest range in Europe after the Alps. The highest peak is 3482 metres and due to its isolation many butterflies occur there that are not found in much of the rest of Spain.
120 species of butterflies have been recorded there and I am really grateful to Merche from http://waste.ideal.es/primeramariposas.htm who told me that July was a great time to look for butterflies there and she suggested a walk I should go on.
So on 4th July I got up early and drove for three hours from Alora to Hoya de la Mora. In winter this is a ski resort 2,550 metres up in the mountains. The road is blocked there, but if you want you can continue further up the mountains in a mini bus to over 3,100 metres.

The walk that had been suggested to me left the road at the barrier at Albergue Universitario and ran across the eastern slopes of the mountain to a stream called Borreguil de San Juan. The walk was only a couple of miles, but it took me three hours there and back because I spent most of my time watching butterflies!
Much of the landscape was very rocky with scree slopes and occasional green, damp areas. It was almost like walking through a giant rockery with the Alpine plants such as Sempervivum, Dianthus, Saxifrage and Gentian carpeting the ground.
Almost as soon as I set off an Apollo, Parnassius apollo nevadensis, landed on the slope above me. The subspecies occurring in the Sierra Nevada has orange markings within the ocelli, rather than the usual red. As the day warmed up I saw several of these big butterflies gliding up and down the hillsides, constantly on the move, and hardly ever landing.

I wasn’t able to identify most of the blues that I saw, until I looked at my pictures afterwards. Even then, I find it very difficult to differentiate between some species. I bought a great book about the butterflies of the Sierra Nevada “Las Mariposas Diurnas de Sierra Nevada”, which has detailed information about each species that lives there and a section on differentiating similar species. Unfortunately some of the characteristics mentioned in the book are not very apparent and the advice conflicts with information from other sources.
Both the Idas Blue, Plebejus idas, and the Silver-studded Blue, Plebejus argus, occur in the Sierra Nevada. The book says that for the Idas Blue the orange markings on the underside wings are more extensive and that the black spots have white rings round them. The fantastic Butterflies of Europe app says that the blue scales are more extensive on the hind wing of the Silver-studded Blue, but I have been told that this may not be the case in the Sierra Nevada! I have come to the conclusion, though, that those that I saw in this area were all Silver-studded Blues, but I would be happy to hear from anyone who thinks otherwise!

It was interesting that I could walk for 50 metres and see no butterflies and then come to an area where there were several flying around. It seemed that a subtle difference in habitat made a big difference in the number of butterflies.
This was the only Small Copper, Lycaena phlaeas, I saw that day.

I am pretty sure that the following pictures are all Escher’s Blue, Agrodiaetus escheri. These were the most common butterflies I saw high up in the mountains and they were mostly in areas around the prostrate Juniper scrub. They seem to have quite bold markings on the underside of the wings.

This Large Wall Brown, Lasiommata maera, flew across the path in front of me and kindly stopped for a picture. The form found in Sierra Nevada and much of the Iberian Peninsula is adrasta, which is lighter in colour with more extensive orange markings.

I descended a small path to a damp area with water running through it. Here I noticed the blues seemed a little smaller and lighter in colour. They turned out to be Nevada Blues, Polyommatus golgus.

This area also had quite a number of Common Blues flying in it. They were noticeably darker blue than the Nevada Blue. Recent genetic studies have revealed that in Europe the Common Blue is actually at least two different species, which look almost identical. Polyommatus icarus covers the majority of Europe, but Polyommatus celina occurs in the Iberian Peninsula and south east Europe. It is thought that one common ancestor split into the two species with celina occurring in north Africa and southern Europe and icarus inhabiting the colder north. As the climate varied over thousands of years the divide between the two species moved north or south. As if this isn't complicated enough the high, isolated Sierra Nevada, which is in the middle of the celina population has been found to also to be home to Polyommatus icarus. To make life even more confusing a third species, Polyommatus abdon, has been described from the mountains in south east Spain!

I have no idea which species of Common Blue I saw that day! They had much bolder markings than others I have seen, but the Common Blue is a very variable butterfly.

As I continued down to the Rio de San Juan I was excited to see some orange butterflies. They were very flighty and difficult to approach and they turned out to be Small Tortoiseshells, Aglais urticae. They seemed more orange than those in Scotland.

It was here that I briefly saw my first Purple-shot Copper, Lycaena alciphron. Later I was to see more of them near the Albergue Universitario where I got into trouble for taking pictures close to their military building. After I showed the soldier the pictures of butterflies I had been taking we parted on good terms!

On my return to the car I saw some Clouded Yellows. Most of them didn't stop, but I managed a distant picture of this one. Looking at the picture I thought that it was a Berger's Clouded Yellow, Coleas alfacariensis, given the lack of a dark border showing through on the hind wing. However, I have been told that it is standard Clouded Yellow, Coleas crocea.

After that, there was a bit of a Fritillary-fest. First a Heath Fritillary, Melitaea athalia. It took me a while to positively identify it, but it is the sub-species celadussa and form nevadensis!!

Then a Niobe Fritillary, Argynnis niobe. The subspecies occurring in Sierra Nevada is altonevadensis, which is said to be smaller and more brightly coloured than the nominate form.

A Queen of Spain Fritillary, Issoria lathonia.

And finally a Cardinal Fritillary, Argynnis pandora seitzi, just as I was getting into the car.

Frustrating moment of the morning was having a Spanish Brassy Ringlet, Erebia Hispania, in the view finder only for it to be chased away by a blue just before I managed to take a picture!
Other butterflies seen that morning were a Bath White and Wall Brown.
After that I drove down the mountain and stopped a couple of times to check what was flying in different areas. I'll put those butterflies on a separate post.