Butterfly Trip to SW Bulgaria – 9th – 20th July 2014 – PART 2

After a successful Butterfly trip to the SE of Bulgaria in 2012, Barrie, Anita & Elliott Staley and myself decided to re-visit this butterfly rich country during July of this year. This time we would visit the high mountain regions of the South West. Our time was spent in the Pirin, Rila and parts of the Rhodope and Osogovo (close to Macedonia border) mountain areas. Most of our time was spent around 5000 feet of altitude, but on several occasions we went to 8000 feet in order to find Cynthia’s & Balkan Fritillaries and a number of other species including Balkan Clouded Yellow and Ottoman Brassy Ringlet.

During the 12 days we discovered a wide variety of butterfly species, finding them ourselves was the challenge and we are still identifying some of the more difficult species as I write this Blog. So far our tally is around 119 and despite the weather being against us for several days, with overnight thunderstorms and heavy rain, this is not too bad a number. The weather probably cost us another 15-20 species. I saw 38 new species including some of the target butterflies such as Balkan Clouded Yellow, Balkan Copper, Balkan Fritillary, Ottoman Brassy Ringlet, Arran Brown, Ripart’s Anomolous Blue and Sandy Grizzled Skipper to name a few.

Additional highlights of the trip were Bulgaria’s beautiful scenery, friendly people and excellent food and wine. Our thanks go to our friend and guide Assen Ignatov,who again worked tirelessly to help us find the wide variety of butterflies that we managed to see. His local knowledge and excellent driving skills are second to none! A photo Album will appear on this website in due course, but in the meantime here are a few of the extraordinary butterflies that are amongst my favourites. I will be posting another Blog that will cover other insects and flowers that we saw during our trip.

 

Pirin Mountain Range from the village of Dobarsko – Tony Davison©

Balkan Fritillary – Note the distinctive Jizz of this high altitude fritillary – Tony Davison©

Cynthia’s Fritillary – Male –  A spectacular butterfly and another high altitude species – Tony Davison©

Ripart’s Anomolous Blue – Note the distinctive white line on the undersidee of hind wing – Tony Davison©

Balkan Copper – Note the small fiscal spots on the upper forewing – Tony Davison©

Scarce Copper – A stunning little butterfly – note the lack of any spots on upper forewing – Tony Davison©

Purple-shot Copper – Tony Davison©

Sooty Copper – Note the dark spots on upper forewing – Tony Davison©

Sandy Grizzled Skipper – note the heavy white marks and white band on upper hind wing – a rare and local species – Tony Davison©

Oberthur’s Grizzled Skipper – note the clean appearance of the upper hind wings, note the paleness to the base of the upper wings – Tony Davison©

Weaver’s Fritillary – Note the beautiful violet tinges to the underwing – Tony Davison©

Lesser Purple Emperor – form clytie – Can be confused with Freyer’s Purple Emperor but note the orange-ringed black ocelli on upper forewing – Tony Davison©

Chestnut Heath – Tony Davison©

Eastern Large Heath – Note the subtle differences with Chestnut Heath above – Tony Davison©

Eastern Short-tailed Blue – Tony Davison© 

Amanda’s Blue – The wide variety of Blue’s makes identification in the field very difficult at times – Tony Davison©

Meleager’s Blue – male – Note the distinctive scalloped hind wing which immediately identifies this species – Tony Davison©

Meleager’s Blue – female – Tony Davison©

Iolas Blue – The largest of the Blue butterflies in Europe  – Tony Davison©

Chequered Blue – A distinctive little blue butterfly, note the pattern of the under hind wing –  Tony Davison©

Most probably an Eastern Rock Grayling – Hipparchia syriaca  – The graylings are really tricky to identify – Tony Davison©

Woodland Grayling – note the white band on under hind-wing and the pale mustard yellow and bronze appearance on under forewing – Tony Davison©

Large Ringlet – Distinctive pattern on upper wing – Tony Davison©