Third time lucky

Having found my first Silver-washed Fritillary in Brussels, I decided to try my luck again with Weaver's Fritillary, a species I'd never seen in Belgium.  My previous two trips to their stronghold near Couvin in the south of Belgium were unsuccessful, the first being rained out, and the second, on 1 June, must have been right at the end of the flight period of the first generation since I didn't find any.  By the end of June, however, the summer generation were on the wing, so I headed back to Dourbes nature reserve and, this time, found plenty of them.

On the way there, I'd already seen some Marbled and Silver-washed Fritillaries and, while photographing the numerous Weaver's, I noticed another large fritillary flying around, one of which eventually landed briefly on a thistle, allowing me to identify it as Dark-Green.

Four fritillary species in one day is pretty exceptional but even more impressive was the fact that, of the fifteen species of butterfly I recorded, Swallowtail was the only one I also saw on 1 June, all the other species being different, with an obvious shift from blues and smaller species to fritillaries and other large butterflies.  That's a complete change in the composition of the butterfly community within just four weeks!  Perhaps the biggest surprise of all, though, was finding this beautiful Black Hairstreak.