Sooty surprise

As I wrote back in 2015, I'm a big fan of fritillaries, and I've still only seen five of the seventeen species which occur in Belgium.  Spurred on by last week's success, therefore, I visited another butterfly reserve near Marche-en-Famenne yesterday.  This reserve is probably the best place in Belgium for Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary and there were lots of them flying around but it took a lot of time and patience to get any picture whatsoever.

At one point, I was trying to photograph one that had landed when it got buzzed by another, much darker fritillary.  This one was much more cooperative and easy to identify as the even rarer False Heath Fritillary, which was totally unexpected.

Things didn't stop there, though, as I also found my first Black Hairstreak and a Pearly Heath, which I'd not seen for five years.  I had started the day in a flower-filled field containing several Black-veined Whites but, when I returned there later on, only blues remained.  I thus took some pictures of them instead to check whether or not they were all Common Blues, and didn't think I'd found anything different.  Examining my pictures on the way back home, however, I came across one with spots on the upperwing.  I wasn't aware of any blues with spotting on the upperwing and originally dismissed it as an aberrant Common Blue female since they can be extremely variable.  It was only when I was going through my field guide to tally the day's list of 18 butterfly species, I noticed the pattern was more typical of the coppers, and discovered I'd photographed a Sooty Copper without even realising!

A la Tienne

Yesterday, I visited the Tienne Breumont for the first time.  This nature reserve is a chalk grassland on a reef knoll, formed by an ancient coral reef, and is known for its outstanding butterfly diversity, including several species which are extremely rare in Belgium.  The biggest surprise, though, was finding this beautiful Late Spider Orchid.

I met a couple of guys who were looking for orchids and hadn't found any so they were over the moon when I showed them this one I'd discovered by chance whilst trying to photograph a Dingy Skipper.  Grizzled Skippers were abundant and I managed to get a good enough photo to identify my first Red-underwing Skipper.

I had hoped to see some fritillaries, however, so the orchid guys told me to visit another hillside visible in the distance, where they had seen lots of butterflies.  Sure enough, as soon as I got to the other nature reserve, I spotted several fritillaries doing a mating dance.  They were pretty hard to photograph, let alone identify, so I was relieved to find this one reluctant to leave its flower and posing for the camera for as long as I wanted.

Even with pictures like these, identification isn't straight-forward but it seems they were Heath Fritillaries, another new species for me and my 17th butterfly species of the day.  I realised once again that birding and butterflying are mutually exclusive as you can't possibly be looking both down at the ground and up at the sky.  I did see a couple of Melodius Warblers and a pair of Red-backed Shrikes, though, both of which are restricted to the very south of Belgium, and the House Martins nesting at Couvin station kept me entertained whilst waiting for my train back to Brussels.

Seeing double

Over the weekend, I went back to Kalmthout Heath, which was full of singing Tree Pipits and Willow Warblers, with the occasional Common Redstart and quite a few Spotted Flycatchers.  Small Heath (above), Green Hairstreak and Brimstone were the only butterflies we saw, and we ended the day with a pair of Hobby sitting in the lakeside trees, waiting for the drizzle to stop.  I found another Spotted Flycatcher today, but this time in Brussels and on my regular patch, where I've not seen it before.  Baby Coots were everywhere;

I also saw my first damselflies of the year; one Azure Bluet and a couple of Large Red tandems, one of which posed nicely amongst the daisies.

Summer Teal

Garganey, or Summer Teal as it is known in both Dutch and French, is one of our most beautiful ducks and extremely rare in Brussels (our last was almost two years ago).  I thus couldn't resist going to see this handsome male which was found yesterday in Anderlecht.  It certainly felt like summer too, with lots of Swallows skimming the water surface and several Swift flocks high in the sky. 

A nice discovery I made the other day was this Map butterfly warming itself up on a discarded mattress!
Another highlight of the past ten days or so was finding a singing, migrant Wood Warbler, which is almost as rare within Brussels as Garganey.

 Garganey by Richard Prior