Post by Ed on Oct 12, 2017 6:50:57 GMT
In September I had my mind set on traveling to somewhere in south east asia but instead I traveled to the high altitudes of the Tibetan mountains. As displayed in Nomads superb “The Everest butterfly hunters” article Tibet has some nice butterflies and I could not wait to get them into my net.
Upon my arrival I was checked for all appropriate paper work, to no surprise traveling to Tibet is not easy with the current policies. Then we made our way to the hotel.
On Day 1 of my trip I saw a considerable amount of leps through the window of our tour bus, but nowhere to stop and catch.
On the following days we took the road to the mountains and to the high-altitude "Holy" lakes there I found patches of plants that sheltered butterflies within them, I wasted no time and caught only 6 butterflies (3 of them Colias) at this first stop before the clouds crept over us and the butterflies took shelter. This is why I titled my article Holy tibetan butterflies
!(also so people would read it)
We then went for lunch in a local restaurant where I managed to strike a few more specimens as lunch was being cooked, here I found some large pieris that I assumed were P.rapea, but it has been brought to my attention that these are P.brassicae. Ive never collected or seen P.brassicae in the past but these were an awful big as shown bellow next to a Papilio mackkii from east china.
PS: as you can see the Pieris had its attenae broken off, this is because there was so little moisture that by the time I arrived in the hotel to transfer specimens to new envelopes they were already dry!
Upon my arrival I was checked for all appropriate paper work, to no surprise traveling to Tibet is not easy with the current policies. Then we made our way to the hotel.
On Day 1 of my trip I saw a considerable amount of leps through the window of our tour bus, but nowhere to stop and catch.
On the following days we took the road to the mountains and to the high-altitude "Holy" lakes there I found patches of plants that sheltered butterflies within them, I wasted no time and caught only 6 butterflies (3 of them Colias) at this first stop before the clouds crept over us and the butterflies took shelter. This is why I titled my article Holy tibetan butterflies
!(also so people would read it)We then went for lunch in a local restaurant where I managed to strike a few more specimens as lunch was being cooked, here I found some large pieris that I assumed were P.rapea, but it has been brought to my attention that these are P.brassicae. Ive never collected or seen P.brassicae in the past but these were an awful big as shown bellow next to a Papilio mackkii from east china.
PS: as you can see the Pieris had its attenae broken off, this is because there was so little moisture that by the time I arrived in the hotel to transfer specimens to new envelopes they were already dry!
