Butterfly bonanza

Three years ago, I visited a reserve close to the French border which had lots of Green-underside and Silver-studded Blues.  It requires a three-hour train journey to get there, though, so I've not been back since, until yesterday that is.  I was tempted back to try and add another blue to my lifelist but, once there, I was disappointed to see no blues whatsoever, in stark contrast to my first visit, the only butterflies on the wing being Marbled Whites.  After about fifteen minutes, however, I noticed just one blue low in the vegetation and it turned out to be the one I was after, a beautiful, female, Short-tailed Blue!

 
You can even see the ever so tiny tails after which it is named even though these are rarely visible in the field.  After such a quick result, and with very little else around, I decided to try another reserve a few kilometres away, the Crassier de Musson.  This had lots more butterflies, including a male Short-tailed Blue which was camera-shy, and a few Silver-studded Blues which had lost their silver studs and thus had me confused for a while, as well as a pair of extremely vocal, territorial Ravens.  The forested walk between the two reserves was full of Silver-washed Fritillaries and I'm pretty sure I also saw a couple of Southern Small Whites, although I really needed a photo to confirm the identification of this tricky species.

 
This was the leaf they were sitting on right up until I took the photo!  Nevertheless, I ended up with a new, all-time high day-list of 25 species of butterfly and, whilst I was very pleased with my pictures of my first Short-tailed Blue, this Sooty Copper, another rare species I only get to see a few times a year, ended up being my favourite photograph of the day.