Searching for Brown Hairstreak eggs to stave off the winter
blues is proving unsuccessful, with favoured thickets of young Blackthorn
having been flailed left right and centre, so it’s back to Switzerland to eke
out the remains of the summer that was. Unlike the lycaenids, the fritillaries didn’t yield any new
species for me, but it was nice to re-acquaint myself with old friends in a
different context. Fritillary is a vernacular name that doesn’t really reflect
the taxonomy of the butterflies that it’s applied to, which can be divided into
two main groups: Melitaeini (Euphydryas
and Melitaea) and Argynnini (Argynnis, Issoria, Boloria, Brenthis in the Alps), 2 rather distantly-related
groups of Nymphalids. Melitaeini are generally smaller, with the classic
checkerboard markings, while the Argynnini are typically the larger, more
orange, and more mobile species.
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| Glaciegenta |
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| Glaciegenta |
My favourite of the fritillaries is one of the Melitaeini,
the Marsh Fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia).
In the UK, it favours damp neutral/acid meadows and calciolous grassland, but
in Europe is a bit more cosmopolitan, and has evolved into a large variety of
regional subspecies, generally with a high altitude form, and low altitude form
in each area. A new paper gives loads of really cool information on the
taxonomy (and some pictures of the many awesome-looking forms): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/syen.12167/abstract
, in Spain for example Euphydryas beckeri
(or Euphydryas aurinia beckeri if you’re
not a splitter) flies at low altitudes, while Euphydryas aurinia pyrenesdebilis favours the peaks, and in the
South of France: Euphydryas aurinia
provencalis in the lowlands, and Euphydryas
aurinia glaciegenta in the Alps. The latter, formerly lumped with pyrenesdebilis as just debilis (on account of morphological
similarities resulting from convergent evolution, the two are pretty different both in terms of genitalia and
genetics apparently) was the subspecies I caught up with, a smaller, more
contrasty form than the ones I know and love from the west country (Marsh Frits
tend to get a bit smaller and darker with altitude). These stunning little
beasts were toughing it out by one of our campsites at 2000m towards the end of
the walk, they feed on gentians (unlike ours, which opt for Devil’s Bit
Scabious), and fly much later in the year, between June and August depending,
like many things in the Alps, on the altitude.
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| Mountain Fritillary (metallic female!) |
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| Mountain Fritillary |
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| Shepherd's Frit |
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| Shepherd's Frit |
A variety of other high Alpine species were flying alongside
these at our campsite, including Shepherd’s Fritillaries, a species that looks
very similar to the closely-related Mountain Fritillary (the males can be distinguished
by greater red suffusion on the underside, and two rows of submarginal spots in
Shepherd’s, and the females by Mountain’s gorgeous blue suffusion). Both are
high altitude specialists feeding on violets, in common with most Boloria species, and fly extremely
quickly in hot weather, fortunately I was able to catch up with a couple of them
on cooler afternoons. These flew alongside their close, and equally similar-looking
relatives, Small Pearl-Bordered and Pearl-Bordered Fritillaries, both are
classic spring species here in the UK (apart from when Small Pearls sneak in a
second brood and ruin everything in August), but with the high altitudes and
cold temperatures in the Alps delaying development, I found many mud-puddling
companionably alongside Silver-Spotted Skippers and Chalkhill Blues – the
ultimate species of heady late summer days on the chalk back here, with the
orange emperors of the spring woodlands and meadows – weird!
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| High Brown Fritillary (Note sex brands!) |
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| Again note sex brands! |
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| Niobe Frit egg-laying. |
Other classic summer species flying alongside these early
emergers were the Argynnis species,
High Brown, Silver-Washed, Niobe and Dark Green Fritillaries (in order of
increasing abundance). The latter were present in pretty much every flowery
meadow, like lepidopteran sports cars, fast, flashy, and utterly unattainable,
I’ve seen them every year for the last 6 and still haven’t got a photo that I
actually like. I thought I’d succeeded with the photo below, but in an elated
rush of blood to the head, I’d not noticed the enormous shiny sex-brands on the
forewings that should have been screaming High Brown, this was only encountered
a couple of times, both in the small, sheltered clearings that seem to be a key
part of Alpine woodlands. Niobe was slightly commoner towards the end of our
trip, quite distinctive in flight with its slightly paler ground colour and
blue-looking veins (it’s the little things), it falls somewhere between Dark
Green (very rounded) and High Brown (pretty angular) in terms of its shape, and
was found in pretty similar habitat to the High Browns. Silver-Washed
Fritillaries are the odd ones out of the group, discarding the ‘dots and pearls’
underside motif of their relatives in favour of their own magnificent green and
white water colour. They’re more of a woodland butterfly too, and like High
Brown, tended to pop up in clearings along the route. Interestingly, the
ultimate Argynnis has just begun to stake a claim to Swiss territory (as
chronicled on Guy Padfield’s UK Butterflies Diary here: http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4872&p=74964&hilit=Cardinal#p74964,
this
is of course, the legendary Cardinal, possibly the chief of all the European
Fritillaries, a giant, roided up silver-washed with a green tint and
extravagant red forewing panel just because, I was lucky enough to catch up
with a couple in the south of France a few years ago (see photos).
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| Bonus pic of 'The Chief' |
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| Tit Frit |
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| Tit Frit |
The commonest fritillary from the trip was undoubtedly
Titania’s, this is a smart butterfly that tends to pop up hand in hand with
Purple-Edged Coppers (since both feed on Bistort in damp meadows). Like most
Bolorias, it’s a wonderfully graceful flyer, with interspersing rapid flapping
with lengthy glides. Perhaps this is where it gets its name from, Titania, in
Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream was the Queen of the Fairies.
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| False Heath Frit |
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| Knapweed Frit |
In previous trips to the Alps, it’s always been joined by
the Lesser Marbled Fritillaries (yet another Bistort feeder), yet these
handmaidens to the queen were strangely absent in the parts of Switzerland that
our walk took us to, instead, the second most abundant species was the False
Heath Fritillary. As the name suggests, it’s a dead ringer for Heath Frits
which we know and love from coppiced woodland in the UK, appearing slightly
darker, the cause of the occasional identification headache. In fact, the whole
Melitea genus becomes rather more varied and tricky once you go abroad, along
our walk for example, we clocked up Spotted Fritillary (bright orange, and easy
enough), Grisons Fritillary (another high-altitude hard nut, look for the dumbbell
mark on the forewing), Meadow Fritillary (slightly sparser forewing markings
than Heath and the darker False Heath), Heath Fritillary, and Knapweed
Fritillary (like a large, angular Glanville Fritillary – very smart).
Generally, I managed to pick my way through this group and the majority of the
ID disasters were saved for Pyrgus
(with a handful helpfully set aside for Erebia
too, in the interests of fairness), such disasters (I’ve convinced myself), are
a natural part of getting to grips with the awe-inspiring variety of
butterflies in the Alps, and well worth the effort.
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| Tit Frit in the land of the Tit Frit |
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