Author: David Bradley

I started off with several thousand photos from our recent trip to northern Greece (June 2024). A lot of those were simply burst-mode shots of the same specimen where I hoped to capture it in the perfect pose between fluttering or flapping of bird or butterfly wings. I backed up all the full SD cards on to an external hard drive and then used FastStone Viewer on my laptop to work through the collections as quickly as I could discarding obvious blurs and duds and then homing in the generally decent photos.

I think I ended up with about 500. I then processed these with DxO PureRaw 4, Topaz Sharpen, and PaintShopPro and began adding to the Sciencebase site. This is the final batch (batch 10) of butterflies from the trip and rather than break it up into several blogs, I’ve made it one long scrollable page with all the decent remaining shots from the collection.

Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

 

Amanda’s Blue, Polyommatus amandus
Great Banded Grayling, Brintesia circe
Heath Fritillary, Melitaea athalia
Scarce Swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius
Southern White Admiral, Limenitis reducta
Painted Lady, Vanessa atalanta

Great Banded Grayling, Brintesia circe

Great Banded Grayling, Brintesia circe

Heath Fritillary, Melitaea athalia

Scarce Swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius

Southern White Admiral, Limenitis reducta

Southern White Admiral, Limenitis reducta

Painted Lady, Vanessa atalanta

Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

This is the rare, “helice” form of the female Clouded Yellow butterfly, Colias croceus f. helice. Not to be confused with the Pale and the Berger’s Clouded Yellow species. Spotted first on our trip Mrs Sciencebase. We get Clouded Yellow in rare irruption years in the UK, as I’ve mentioned before. Not seen this helice form before though.

Yellow-banded Skipper, Pyrgus sidae, looks a bit like Mallow Skipper from above, but has this lovely custard yellow banding on the underside of its forewings, visible in my photo.

Large Blue, Phengaris arion, quite rare in the UK and found only in specific pockets of habitat.

This skipper, the Large Skipper, Ochlodes sylvanus, is one of a handful of species we see in the UK.

We have a couple of fritillary-type butterflies in the UK, but there are a lot more species in Greece. This is one of them, the delightful Knapweed Fritillary, Melitaea phoebe.

Marbled White, Melanargia galathea, is a species we do see in the British summer. Funnily enough this mainly white-coloured species is not a “white” by family, but one of the browns, a Nymphalidae, more closely related to the Meadow Brown than the Large White, for instance.

I’ve mentioned White-letter Hairstreak, Satyrium w-album, several times on Sciencebase over the last few years, having identified a colony myself in Rampton in 2022. Very much present in the UK too. But, lovely to see the species in Greece too. The scientific name suggestive of the butterfly being a satyr, with a white (album) “w” on its wings. Also in the shot, what I believe is a Red Longhorned Beetle, Stictoleptura rubra, in flight.

Clouded Yellow, Colias croceus f. helice
Yellow-banded Skipper, Pyrgus sidae
Large Blue, Phengaris arion
Large Skipper, Ochlodes sylvanus
Knapweed Fritillary, Melitaea phoebe
Marbled White, Melanargia galathea
White-letter Hairstreak, Satyrium w-album

Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

On our recent butterflying, birding, and mothing trip to Northern Greece, I was keen to catch sight of an Eastern Festoon, Allancastria cerisyi, and hopefully get some photographs of this amazing member of the Papillonidae. The Papillonidae family is the “swallowtails” featured elsewhere on our trip in the form of the Scarce Swallowtail and the Yellow Swallowtail.

Our intrepid guide Michael spotted the first of our Eastern Festoons in a little fallow field we were investigating that had a nice bramble border. The same field with our first European Green Lizard. Later I saw an Eastern Festoon in flight with its wings full displaying, but didn’t get a flight shot. So, these will have to do for my records of this species.

Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

 

It has taken quite some time to work through the 1000s of photos I took of butterflies, moths, and birds in Greece. I’m trying to just pull out the single best shot of each species, but it seems a shame to waste flight shots of beautiful species like the Clouded Yellow, The Cardinal, and others, so they will feature in the various batches at least a couple of times.

Clouded Yellow, Colias croceus
European Common Blue, Polyommatus icarus
Dingy Skipper, Erynnis tages
Eastern Bath White, Pontia edusa
Eastern Rock Grayling, Hipparchia syriaca
Green Hairstreak, Callophrys rubi
The Hermit, Chazara briseis
Iolas Blue, Iolana iolas
Large Tortoiseshell, Nymphalis polychloros
Little Tiger Blue, Tarucus balkanicus
Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae

Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

As regular readers will already know Mrs Sciencebase and myself went on an expertly guided trip to Northern Greece in June 2024. We were there to see the local butterflies and birds, as well as a few moths, and any other wildlife that came into view and to enjoy the local food and drink. This is batch 4 of the butterfly photos. I am yet to process the birds, but that will happen soon, so subscribe to the newsfeed to get the word when the word is out.

The Black-veined White is the species that keeps getting mentioned in the British media when people illicitly raise them from imported eggs and release them into the wild. It used to be on the British list, but no longer. With climate change and the right wind direction it may re-appear hear naturally. It doesn’t need fake introductions into inappropriate habitat that do nothing but distort the scientific data.

I think I was the last of our group to spot this species, Lattice Brown (Kirinia roxelana), Michael, Martine, and Tricia having seen it on the second day. I didn’t get this shot until the last day of the tour.

Large Tortoiseshell, Nymphalis polychloros, used to be an extant (the opposite of extinct) species in the UK, but no longer. That said, there have been occasional sightings, these are usually captive-bred specimens. There are hints that some are vagrants that have made it across The Channel. Of course, they are very much extant in Greece and elsewhere in mainland Europe. We were unable to see this one’s legs to check whether it was the yellow-legged species, N. xanthomelas.

You might think The Cardinal, Argynnis pandora, is one of those fritillaries, it certainly looks like one, but that cardinal-red margin, marks it out as a bit different and so while it is certainly one of the Nymphalidae like the fritillaries it stands ecclesiastically apart

Black-veined White, Aporia crataeg
Lattice Brown, Kirinia roxelana
Large Tortoiseshell, Nymphalis polychloros, aka Blackleg Tortoiseshell
Lesser Fiery Copper, Lycaena thersamon
Little Tiger Blue, Tarucus balkanicus, aka the Balkan Pierrot
Blue-spot Hairstreak, Satyrium spini
The Cardinal, Argynnis Pandora
Clouded Apollo, Parnassius mnemosyne
Large Blue, Phengaris arion

Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

I’ve occasionally seen new butterfly species abroad – Scarce and Yellow Swallowtail, various blues, Cleopatra, and one or two others. But, we took a trip to northern Greece in June 2024 that was all about butterflies and birds and my world “tick list” expanded by quite a bit. Here’s the gallery of butterfly species we saw and of which I got photographs. There were several other species we saw between us that I don’t think I got photos, including Dark Green Fritillary, Essex and Small Skippers, possibly Anomolous Blue, and one or two others.

Working my way through far too many photos from our Greenwings trip to Greece in June 2024. The first two batches are here and here. My moth photos from the tour are here. I had a couple of good years with finding butterfly species in the UK that I’d not seen before. But, that dried up a little in 2023 because of acute mobility issues. So, in 2024, we headed to Greece and saw around 40+ species we’d never seen in the UK, 30 or so more that are of varied rarity in the UK but also present across Europe.

Wood White, Leptidea sinapis
Woodland Ringlet, Erebia medusa
Eastern Bath White, Pontia edusa (gen det needed vs P. daplidice)
Common Yellow Swallowtail, Papilio machaon
Eastern Rock Grayling, Hipparchia syriaca
Grizzled Skipper, Pyrgus malvae
Large Wall Brown, Lasiommata maera
Wall Brown, Lasiommata megera
Spotted Fritillary, Melitaea didyma

Butterflies of Greece Batch 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9