So, while her husband, Malcolm, was conquering the Matterhorn, Helen and I took the Postbus just a few stops down the valley to La Luette, to walk along the path which crosses the Passarelle de la Combe. We then dropped down to the naturally heated waters near Combioula, before climbing back up passed the Pyramids to Euseigne.
Helen was thanking me for taking her along this walk, but I was thanking her in the end as I managed to take pictures of three new butterflies, which I’d never seen before – and therefore never posted on this site before. 😊
The first (pic 4) was of an albeit tatty looking Dryad (minois dryas).
The second (pic 16) is of a rather shy Tree Grayling (hipparchia statilinus), which decided to hide, as it’s name suggests, under a felled tree trunk. It’s not widely seen across Switzerland, so I’ve included a distribution map (pic 16a) with an arrow indicating (very approximately) where we were.
The third (pic 17) was of a Lesser Purple Emperor (apatura ilia). In French it’s called a ‘Petit Mars changeant’ and it certainly seems to take many forms, being blue/violet or red/orange or, as my luck would have it, dark brown/black! This one flew up to the top of a bush, so I didn’t get a great picture of it. So, for some better pictures of this colourful butterfly please click here. Although more widespread across Switzerland, it’s classed as vulnerable on the Red List and is not that common in our area (pic 17a) . So I was a very happy bunny once I’d identified them all from my book. 😁 Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the flowers, which I couldn’t find at all. It seems every silver lining has a cloud…!
Footnote: The link above and distribution maps were take from Michel and Vincent Baudraz’s excellent website: https://www.lepido.ch/cartes-de-distribution
If you click on a particular group, the individual species are listed with distribution maps. Further photographs of each are also available by clicking on the name of the butterfly).
Alittlebitoutoffocus 
Leave a comment