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Post by luehdorfia on Dec 27, 2016 9:57:31 GMT
I came up with this idea when replying to a post on insectnet. Let's share our magical moments, the moment when you are at the right place at the right time exactly when all fresh ones emerge at the same time.
I had one such moment this year when I was walking along a forest trail and suddenly there were around 15 freshly hatched Gonepteryx rhamni females, all of them feeding on flowers and so fresh that they were still shimmering silvery. I haven't seen any single female before that day and not any after that.
This year all of my magical moments happened by accident. I tried to see some apollos at the Mosel river in Germany and stayed there for three weeks, going to the same location almost every day but missed the flight time because of a too wet spring and then when they hatched on the last day I had it was more than 35 degree Celsius, I went into the whine yards where it was probably well over 40 degrees and not a single butterfly showed up, it was just far too hot for them, so I didn't even see a single Apollo.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2016 12:07:24 GMT
A few summers ago I was visiting some family in the mountains and we decided to go for a drive. It was late spring/early summer, and it had been an unusually warm year. This wasn't long after I had started studying butterflies, and was looking forward to seeing what species were in the area. Earlier that day, my grandmothers garden had served as a rough gauge, but it wasn't looking promising. As we rounded the high mountain switchbacks, the elevation gain started to boost the sightings, and it was beginning to get exciting. Of course I wanted to stop at every mud puddle, but this only lasted for a few miles, and quickly became a nuisance for my patient passengers. At the risk of receiving a verbal lashing, my urges were suppressed and we continued on the journey.
After about an hour we started getting hungry, and there was a secluded campsite coming up which I vividly remembered from my youth. We had packed a fairly hefty cooler full of lunch supplies, and the overall consensus was to build a fire and hang out for a while. The main parking spot was shaded under a grove of pine trees with a small creek babbling around the outskirts, and we immediately saw the stones we had placed to construct a makeshift firepit years ago. With the rest of the family of fire duty, I grabbed a net and headed down a trail to do some sightseeing.
Not long after setting off, the trail led me to a damp meadow. You could tell the snow hadn't been gone long, but there were wildflowers as far as the eye could see. It was like one of those oil paintings you see on daytime television, as surreal as it gets. And perched atop every one of those flowers was a butterfly looking for the good stuff. There were probably 20-30 different species, and most of them looked freshly emerged. I put my net down and sat on top of a boulder to watch the spectacle. I lost all ambition to collect at the risk of disturbing this magical scene. It hard to say how much time passed, but the distant yells of "foods ready" snapped me out of the spell, and returned to camp. After we ate, I brought the family to the meadow, but the window had passed. There were still a few stragglers, but that moment was reserved for me it seems.
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Post by luehdorfia on Dec 27, 2016 18:55:48 GMT
Fantastic, what an invaluable experience!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2016 21:03:47 GMT
It was a memorable experience to be sure, unfortunately I was unable to get pictures. I have already recounted this experience on another forum, but this day was another perfect storm (literally and figuratively). After some heavy rains, there were thousands of large freshly emerged swallowtails on the wing!  |
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Post by luehdorfia on Dec 29, 2016 10:48:25 GMT
It looks amazing! In Europe no matter how perfect weather conditions are we would never have that since we only have very few Papilio species and never heard of a mass occurrence. Only perhaps Parnassius apollo in the French alps, I heard sometimes there can be hundreds.
Did you get a good series of these swallowtails?
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Post by bobw on Dec 29, 2016 17:06:03 GMT
It looks amazing! In Europe no matter how perfect weather conditions are we would never have that since we only have very few Papilio species and never heard of a mass occurrence. Only perhaps Parnassius apollo in the French alps, I heard sometimes there can be hundreds. I once came across a mass emergence of I. podalirius in Serbia. There were hundreds at each wet patch on the ground and I must have seen well over a thousand during the course of a day; there were many squashed on the track where the occasional vehicle had driven past. Bob |
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Post by luehdorfia on Dec 29, 2016 18:36:31 GMT
bobw amazing! I didn'tknow this is possible. In Germany I.podalirius is very rare, in the few locations where it occurs you can be lucky to see five or six in a day, even Papilio machaon is extremely rare. I saw a picture of about 20 machaon mud puddling on a german forum, but that's probably once in a decade. With so many podalirius around you, could you find any aberrations?
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Post by cardon on Dec 29, 2016 19:33:20 GMT
I had the same experience about 20 years ago in France,hundreds of podalirius flying,I caught a few and afterwards I found a caterpillar in my net,I probably brushed against the bushes they where all flying arround.It was a wonderful sight. A few years ago I had a similar experience in Belgium,dozens of Apatura ilia and iris males flying around,I've only seen it once unfortunately ... The specimen in the photo was collected that day. Attachments:
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2016 20:06:08 GMT
Did you get a good series of these swallowtails? I don't really see the point in collecting local species, although I have occasionally for fellow collectors. If a gynandromorph or other abb. crossed my path, it better have it's game face on though. Do the P. apollo in europe have a slow flight? There are a few Parnassius species here in Idaho and you can catch them with your hands, and they don't seem to get scared either. One time I caught and released the same specimen 2-3 times within a few minutes. It seems like this would make them an easy target for predators. |
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Post by satyrinae on Dec 29, 2016 20:40:13 GMT
One magical moment for me was in Albania when on the Drenove mountains I found myself surrounded by hundreds of P. apollo macedonicus. It was a spectacular moment.
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Post by bobw on Dec 30, 2016 0:16:59 GMT
bobw amazing! I didn'tknow this is possible. In Germany I.podalirius is very rare, in the few locations where it occurs you can be lucky to see five or six in a day, even Papilio machaon is extremely rare. I saw a picture of about 20 machaon mud puddling on a german forum, but that's probably once in a decade. With so many podalirius around you, could you find any aberrations? Funnily enough I went back to the same locality two years later and saw hardly any, I don't know the reason for this. They weren't one of my target species so I didn't bother to take any and it would be too difficult to study individuals among so many. I really spent most of the time just staring in wonder or trying in vain to count them. Later it became an interesting game to see how many could be caught with one sweep of the net, I think our record was about 60! I also had a similar experience a couple of years ago in Primorye with Papilio maackii. Bob |
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Post by Paul K on Dec 30, 2016 8:09:25 GMT
March 11, Central Laos, This was a second shot, first in Mid February. I have never seen so many mud puddling Papilios. Photo only covers a part of the fiesta, there were hundreds of them. I returned next year to the same spot and same time of the year with my net, they were none. I tried to lure them if in the area with urine for over a month, but none showed up.  |
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Post by luehdorfia on Dec 30, 2016 12:12:13 GMT
Do the P. apollo in europe have a slow flight? There are a few Parnassius species here in Idaho and you can catch them with your hands, and they don't seem to get scared either. One time I caught and released the same specimen 2-3 times within a few minutes. It seems like this would make them an easy target for predators. It depends on the time of the day, normally during the day they fly around a lot, and only rest on flowers for 10-15 seconds, but in the afternoon when the sun gets milder they tend to lose their energy and sit on flowers where you can pick them up by hand. Unfortunately I never saw any myself, but that's what older collectors told me. |
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Post by jshuey on Jan 3, 2017 16:30:11 GMT
A not so magical moment.
Last summer I was in Chiapas, headed to Ruinas Bonampak with the family in the middle of the Lacandon Forest. The area is managed by the local Maya - the “Lacandones” who are famous for fleeing the Spanish invasion and eking out a subsidence existence in the middle of the forest for hundreds of years. They are still pretty much a subsistence group – but now they also market “cultural tourism” - sort of selling of their own heritage one peso at a time.
In support of that economy, they do not allow tourists to simply drive to Bonampak. You have to park at the road, and pay to ride in a combi about 12km to the site (through amazing looking rainforest). So I dutifully parked in the designated area and walked the 100 m or so over to the combi stand. In the gravel around the buses were about 30 Neographium dioxippus lacandones and at least 10 Neographium thyastes marchandii – two species that I’ve never collected (this remains the first and only time I’ve even seen N. dioxippus lacandones). There was no standing water – it was just a small spot that was darker, “oilier looking” then the rest of the parking area. Looked like someone either takes a regular piss in the middle of the parking lot, or maybe dumps some cleaning water on the spot. All these bugs were tightly packed into a spot about 0.5 meters in diameter.
Of course I didn’t have my camera, so I raced back to the car, grabbed it and returned to take a picture. By the time I covered that distance, a new combi had pulled in and was sitting exactly on top of the spot. A few bugs were flying around, but most had headed out. I saw neither of these species at the ruins - although butterflies and flowers where quite abundant at the site.
A couple of months later, I finally caught my first N. thyastes marchandii, a beat up example from a mud puddle I pissed in on and off for three days in Belize.
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Post by exoticimports on Jan 3, 2017 16:47:24 GMT
It was first thing Easter morning on Makira, Solomon Islands. I was standing along a hedgerow bordering a garden, having seen or caught nothing, when Graphium codrus christobalus came rocketing down out of the sun from a hundred meters and landed on a flower right in front of me. I caught it- a perfect, fresh specimen, the only one I've ever seen.
Chuck
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