Troodos Mountains - Butterflies

On 28th July I decided to head for the Troodos Mountains in search of some different species of butterflies. I had been told that many species make their way up into the cooler mountains from the coast in the summer. There are also various other species that are only found in the mountains.
I drove along the coast and then up the F616 towards Troodos, stopping a few times whenever I saw a spot that looked good for butterflies.
My first stop was to take a picture of the view, but I noticed a small patch of Heliotropium europaeum, so thought I should check if any butterflies were feeding on it. There was a very old and tattered Common Blue and then I noticed a really small butterfly. I was delighted to see that it was a Grass Jewel, Chilades trochylus. It was so small that I could only follow its shadow as it flew from flower to flower.

 

All along the road I saw Swallowtails and Small White as I drove along. Further up in the hills I stopped a couple of times to look for some of the Grayling species that occur on Cyprus. However, all I saw were Long-tailed Blues.
Eventually, I arrived at Pano Paltres and just as I was leaving the village I saw a small parking area with walking trail. This was a rough tail following a small river up to Caledonian Falls.
As I started to walk up the track I saw several butterflies. The first I thought was another Long-tailed Blue, but it turned out to be a Purple Hairstreak, Favonius quercus. This was a surprise as I have been lead to believe that the Purple Hairstreak is rare in Cyprus and this was in an area of fruit trees with no sign of any oak trees - their normal food plant.

It allowed me to take one picture, but then flew off. There were a number of Long-tailed Blues at this lower end of the track along with Holly Blues. An Oriental Meadow Brown, Hyponephele lupina, briefly landed at the side of the trail and I was able to take a quick picture before someone walked past and disturbed it.

A little further up the track three Large Whites were feeding on a plant. I was about to take a picture of one of them when three kids ran up with fishing nets swiping at the butterflies!! Unfortunately, this walk proved to be very popular and it was difficult to see any butterflies for any length of time before they were disturbed by someone walking past.

However, this area had a good number of different butterfly species. I was surprised to see a few Speckled Woods, Pararge aegeria, here.

Amongst the Speckled Woods I was teased by a number of dark butterflies that would not let me approach them. I would only notice them when they flew up from the rocks on the trail. They would always land too far away for me to identify them, but I did manage to take a couple of pictures on full zoom which allowed me to identify two of them as Cyprus Graylings, Hipparchia cypriensis. One is a male and one is a female.

One other butterfly I was able to identify was the Lattice Brown, Kirinia roxelana. This is a very striking butterfly with large brown ocelli on its wings. I disturbed it as I was walking up the trail, it flew off and landed next to a rock and then crawled into the vegetation. Unfortunately it flew off when I tried to get a better view of it.
All along the trail there were Holly Blues, Celastrina argiolus, resting on leaves, feeding on flowers and drinking from the damp soil at the edge of the river.

The walk to the falls was well worth the climb with the fine spray nicely cooling the air.

On my return journey, as I was driving through Paltres I noticed a large thistle with some Large Whites, Pieris brassicae, feeding on it. I stopped the car and walked back thinking that I could get a photograph to make up for those chased away by the kids earlier.

While I was watching them a Clouded Yellow, Colias croceus, and a White-banded Grayling, Pseudochazara anthelea, briefly landed on the thistles, each allowing me just enough time to take a fuzzy photograph!

On my way home I stopped off a few more times. In a small field just outside Kedares there was a small irrigation channel surrounded by wild flowers. Among them I saw several Common Blues, Polyommatus icarus.

The field also contained many Large Whites, Holly Blues, Clouded Yellows, including the white form helice, a Speckled Wood and a Cleopatra. A little further down the road next to a layby I saw another Grass Jewel and a Mallow Skipper.
All together a very successful day searching for butterflies.

Larnaca Salt Lake - Butterflies

My favourite family of butterflies is Lycaenidae - the blues, coppers and hairstreaks. When I was looking at Eddie John's fantastic web site of Butterflies of Cyprus there was one particular butterfly that I decided I really wanted to see - The Small Desert Blue, Chilades galba. Eddie kindly told me a good place to go and look for it, so on 22 July I set off from our rented villa to drive 100 miles to Larnaca Salt Lake.

Eddie had told me to head for the Hala Sultan Tekke mosque and to walk along the track beyond it around the salt lake. This was certainly good advice, as while I was parking the car I noticed a small blue butterfly flying at the edge of the track. I jumped out of the car and was delighted to discover that it was a Small Desert Blue.

The Small Desert Blue, Chilades galba, is small butterfly with a wing span of 17 - 22mm. I noticed that the males are a lot smaller than the females. It only occurs on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. The books say that it is only found where its foodplant, Prosopis farcta, grows. This is a short thorny shrub, which it turned out was growing along both sides of the track. I believe that it can be quite invasive and it has very deep roots. It was certainly having no problem growing in the hostile environment around the salt lake.

I needn't have been so hasty to look at the first butterfly I saw as it turned out that there were thousands of them on the plants along the edge of the track. Sometimes it was impossible to take a picture without another Small Desert Blue trying to get into the shot!

I have never experienced butterflies in such numbers, they were almost flying up in clouds as I walked along the track.

Eddie also told me that if I walked as far as a flight of steps I would find some Zizyphus lotus bushes. He said if I looked in these I may find Little Tiger Blue butterflies, Tarucus balkanicus. I struggled through the vegetation to the only bush I could see and was soon rewarded with a Little Tiger Blue. This was a real thrill, as I have never seen a butterfly like this before.

According to the books this butterfly is the same size as the Small Desert Blue, but it appeared to be larger to me. The underside of the wings are beautifully marked, but very difficult to photograph, because they either had the sun glaring off their wings or they had shadows from the leaves on them. 

As I walked back to the car I realised that there were several Zizyphus lotus plants growing along the track that I had walked past. When I had a look, many of them also had Little Tiger Blues flying around them.

Having learned which plants the butterflies liked I found a perfect area with Zizyphus lotus and Prosopis farcta growing alongside a blackberry bush. Here I also saw Long-tailed Blues, Small Whites and Lang's Short-tailed blues, Leptotes pirithus.

Most thrilling of all for me were a couple of  Lesser Fiery Coppers, Lycaena thersamon. These are quite large with a wingspan of between 28 and 35mm.

The first one that I saw was the female above, and later I saw the male, below. The pictures don't really do them justice, as they are a beautiful bright orange/copper colour when they fly.

Among all of the Small Desert Blues there were a few Common Blues, Polyommatus icarus. They looked really big compared to their smaller cousins. 

Further along the track my eye was caught by this female Lang's Short-tailed Blue, Leptotes pirithous, which was, I think, trying to fend off the advances of a male. It was vibrating its wings, which made the blue scales shine with a real intensity.

This behaviour continued for several minutes with the occasional male Small Desert Blue joining in! Eventually, the male appeared to give up and he settled close to the female who then closed her wings. Sadly I had to drag myself away. It was 35 degrees Celsius and the sun was very intense and I had a 100 mile journey ahead of me to return to the family. What an amazing day, though. I will never forget seeing so many Small Desert Blues and such a great variety of Lycaenidae. I am very grateful to Eddie John for suggesting I should go there. I would never have imagined that a hot, dry area next to a salt lake would be such a great place to look for butterflies!

Cyprus Dragonflies and Damselflies

There was certainly no shortage of dragonflies and damselflies in Cyprus. This surprised me a little as I always imagine that they like wetland areas, but there must have been sufficient water for them somewhere.

Most the the dragonflies and damselflies below were seen flying around a small pool in the river feeding into Mavrokolympos reservoir. However, I also regularly saw them when I was out looking for butterflies nearer the villa and we had a resident dragonfly at the pool.

I had no idea about the identification of any of the pictures below, but I am very grateful to Noushka, who has a wonderful wildlife photography blog for identifying many of the dragonflies and damselflies on this page. I have also had a great deal of help from David Sparrow who runs dragonfly monitoring scheme across Cyprus. I have added the names as captions to the pictures.

Sympetrum fonscolombii male

Sympetrum fonscolombii female

The red dragonfly below is the same species as the one that took up residence at our swimming pool. Of course it may not have been the same red dragonfly I saw each day at the pool! This seemed to be quite a common species in Cyprus.

Trithemis annulata male

There were also some beautiful damselflies at the pool:

Calopteryx splendens, male

I wonder if the two below are male and female?

Calopteryx splendens female

Calopteryx splendens female

This one looks a little more like those I see back home in Scotland.

Ishnura elegans

Meanwhile, back at the villa, I saw this species most times that I went out to look for butterflies. I don't know where the nearest water was. Certainly the stream at the bottom of the valley was completely dry. 

Sympetrum fonscolombii female

The dragonfly below was certainly my favourite. The way the red merged into yellow on the abdomen gave the impression that it had been dipped in gold.

Sympetrum fonscolombii male

Towards the end of our holiday this blue dragonfly also took up residence at the pool. I naively thought that it was the same species as the red dragonfly (red for girls, blue for boys?), as they would briefly chase each other and then land at opposite corners of the pool. However, my theory was destroyed when I saw two blue dragonflies mating on our last day!!

Orthetrum chrysostigma, male

Thank you again to David and Noushka for their help with the identifications of these dragonflies and damselflies. David also informed me that I also had a picture of Orthetrum coerulescens below:

And David identified this fussy picture as a Magnificent Emperor, Anax immaculifrons:

Mavrokolympos Dam - Butterflies

A couple of days into our holiday to Cyprus I walked up the road towards Mavrokolympos Dam. I had been told that this road was a great place to see butterflies, but I had also been told that July was not a good time of year for butterflies in Cyprus.

I walked for about two kilometres, but there were no butterflies along the side of the road, or along some small tracks leading to the dried up river. So, I decided to drive up to the reservoir and walked along its west side to the small river that feeds into it.

I was surprised that there were still very few butterflies, but in a small gully I found 11 Common Blues, Polyommatus icarus, all but one were males.

In the same area I saw a single Small White, Pieris rapae.

During the course of my walk I also saw a Wall Brown, Lasiommata megera, a Cyprus Meadow Brown, Maniola cypricola, a Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae and another Pigmy Skipper, Gegenes pumilio.

I was surprised to see water running down the river into the reservoir. There were several species of fish swimming in the water including some that looked just like goldfish!

I searched the grass around the river for some time, thinking that it would be a good place for Dark Grass Blues, Zizeeria karsandra, which at that time I hadn't yet seen. Unfortunately, there were none there, but a Swallowtail, Papilio machaon, spent a long time feeding on the flowers of a shrub there.

There were also many different varieties of dragonflies and damselflies there, which I spent some time watching. By this time I realised that I had spent longer than planned here and I was due to buy some bread on my way back for lunch. I rushed back to the car and started driving down the road, only to discover that it had been closed to traffic! Three large boulders had been pushed across the road. I drove back up to the dam where there were two men surveying the dam wall. We all drove back to have a look at the road block and after many very animated phone calls the men told me that the road authority wanted money to open the road again!

One benefit of waiting there was that a Hermit, Chazara briseis larnacana, landed at the side of the road. 

The underside was a lovely pattern of beige and brown and the upper side was mostly dark grey with white markings. The butterfly tended to land and immediately close its wings, then a few seconds later flash its wings open very briefly. I was lucky to snap this fuzzy picture of it with its wings open.  

We spent some time looking at the boulders and at a fence next to the road to see if we could make a way past. Eventually the men suggested that we should try to drive along a dirt track. They said their truck could make it, but it could be a problem for my hire car! Eventually, after much wheel-spinning, bumping and sliding we made it through to a tarmac road. All along I was thinking of the contract that I had signed with the car hire company stating that I wasn't to take the car off-road! Luckily no damage was done and they were none-the-wiser!

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.