2024 was not just about the birds since I finally added two long-wanted butterfly species to my Belgian list, namely
Poplar Admiral and
Cranberry Fritillary. That takes my Belgian butterfly list to 84 of the 90 or so regularly-occurring species,
82 of which I have photographed. A trip to Berlin also got me the extinct-in-Belgium
Large Chequered Skipper, and my first visit to Corsica got me another 5 new species;
Bath White,
Cardinal, the endemics
Corsican Wall Brown and
Corsican Small Heath, plus a brief glimpse of a Nettle-tree Butterfly. My 9th new butterfly species of the year were some skippers I photographed in Bourg-St-Maurice in September which have been identified as
Oberthür's Grizzled Skipper, one of the species I still need to find in Belgium, where it is extremely rare and localised.
My expedition to the Hautes Fagnes for Cranberry Fritillary also got me my first
Spearhead Bluet/Northern Damselfly, taking me to 40 species of odonata in Belgium, and I added
Southern Skimmer, a species I'd only seen in Israel before, to my European list.
