My Blog - Jeff Clarke

Banishing the Winter Blues

{yoogallery src=[/images/stories/blog/picosblues]}

All images unless otherwise stated © Jeff Clarke 2011

As I sit typing this blog the weather outside is cold, wet and dank. It's the sort of day when winter starts to grip your body. My left wrist is aching, a legacy of a break when I was eight years old, a sure sign that a long mild autumn is finally drawing to close. I feel like entering hibernation.

In recent days I've been putting together a new talk on 'Green Spain' and it has really helped me to re-live some fondly remembered days in the Picos de Europa and Pyrenees earlier this year. The myriad images of twirling, gliding, cavorting butterflies are especially vivid. I gave up obsessively listing how many species I'd seen many years ago but just for a bit of fun and background for this blog, I quickly totted up my butterfly year list and discovered I'd seen a creditable 105 species, the vast majority in just 20 days in Northern Spain.

Many eye-catching species, like the myriad members of the Nymphalidae, are prominent on the list, indeed I remember a few occasions suffering what can only be described as 'Fritillary Meltdown' trying to get to grips with half a dozen different species of these orange and black blurs as they zipped around meadows so vibrantly dotted with colour that it reminded me of those colour-blindness charts they test you with at school.

For me though the most indelible memory is of the dazzling and dainty members of the Lycaenidae; AKA the hairsteaks,coppers and blues. Even keeping some of these in vision is a challenge. I recall standing with Paul Hill as we watched a tiny blue butterfly whirring in concentric circles a matter of feet away and yet neither of us could follow its path for more than a few seconds before losing it from view, a trick of the eye as effective as chucking a Klingon Cloaking Mechanism over it, after a a series of manic flights it finally settled in binocular view range and we were able to confirm it as Lang's Short-tailed Blue.

The Picos de Europa in Spring and Summer is alive with blue butterflies and without doubt the most obvious is the checkerboard edged Adonis Blue. Fresh specimens are so electric blue they could make a kingfisher feel dowdy. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Brown Argus, a blue butterfly, whose upperwings are anything but colourful. Yet when they sit on a flower head with wings closed suddenly revealed is an exquisitely marked underwing, sprinkled with black dots and orange chevrons. Getting to grips with the complex underwing patterns of the blues is a bit like platting fog, but gradually things click into place and quite soon it is possible to decipher some of the more cryptic species so that separating Little Blue from Osiris, or Green Underside from Black Eyed Blue becomes more of an exciting challenge and less of a daunting prospect.

Without doubt my most abiding memory of the blue butterflies of Northern Spain this year were the hordes of Silver-studded Blues, avidly drinking up moisture and nutrients from damp patches of mud and gravel. When disturbed they would ripple en-masse like football crowd at the moment a goal is scored. Mesmerising and beautiful. The perfect antidote to chase away the winter blues!

For more information on the Butterflies of the Picos de Europa visit Teresa Farino's Iberian Wildlife Tours website

The 2012 tour of the Picos de Europa is timed to hit a major peak of butterfly diversity and abundance. Click the link for details.

The following two butterfly identification guides are recommended for anyone interested in Europe's butterflies.
Collins: Field Guide to the Butterflies of Britain & Europe.
Tristan Lafranchis Butterflies of Europe - Field Guide and Key