There's already a certain feel of autumn in the air as the Swifts had deserted the skies above Brussels by the end of July. In addition, there seems to be a slight downturn in the variety and numbers of butterflies on the wing so, last week, I had one more day's butterflying in Belgian Luxembourg before it's too late and I ended up seeing no less than 24 species, the most I've seen in one day this year! The
Small Pearl-bordered Fritillaries were showing well this time but I found yet another hairstreak I'd not seen before, namely Brown Hairstreak, which is our biggest one.
Yesterday, I visited one of the few Belgian colonies of Silver-spotted Skipper which is conveniently located right next to Lommel train station and they were even easier to find than to get to. I thus added yet another species to my Belgian list, which now stands at 62 out of of the 103 recently recorded species in Belgium. The only ones left are all either rare or localised and require a species-by-species effort for me to connect with.
