POPLAR ADMIRAL!

Poplar Admiral is probably the rarest of Belgium's breeding butterflies, occurring in a single locality along the French border.  There are only ever a few individuals and they have a ridiculously short flying period of roughly two weeks, so that one only has a very small window, usually from mid-June, to try to see one.  Furthermore, they spend most of their time high up in the trees, only occasionally coming down to the ground.

I've been to their location several times over the past few years, but always too late.  This year's wet spring seems to have delayed things a little and it has been seen regularly this past week so, yesterday, I gave it a try.  A few White Admirals along the way were a good omen, as was this Purple Emperor in the car park as soon as I arrived.

Once in the reserve, however, it soon became apparent how few butterflies are already on the wing and several people had been looking for the admiral all morning without success.  After a while, I thus went off and explored the surrounding area, again seeing very little, but, once I got back to the reserve I found two guys with their cameras pointing at a muddy puddle.  They beckoned me over and there it was, a beautiful, male Poplar Admiral taking minerals from the mud.

At first, it stubbornly refused to open its wings but, after taking dozens of underwing shots, it eventually moved a little further and rested with its wings open!

Going by the reports, it looks like this individual was the only one seen all day, and then only for about an hour or so by just four people.  I was thus very lucky to finally get to see our rarest butterfly and my 83rd of the 90 or so regularly-occurring species in Belgium.