Clouded yellow species, Germany (1 Viewer)

Any help with ID much appreciated. My first thoughts were Berger's Clouded Yellow. Photographs taken in Rheinland Pfalz in west Germany on the 8th August 2012.

Cheers,

any ideas? Opinions much welcome or perhaps a link to a good butterfly website so that I might be able to ID it myself,

cheers,

Try here http://www.leps.it/
Not sure myself, but looks closer to Bergers (dont have field guide or keys to hand).

Thanks Phil, I asked another person who is good on butterflies and they were confident it was a Berger's. Glad I got the ID right :-O

To answer your question about websites, www.ukbutterflies.co.uk is good for species which show up in the UK, including this one. For european species where the UK site might not include it, I tend to use www.eurobutterflies.com although it's mainly a photo site and tends not to answer the key question of whether species X is found in country Y.

Of course there's always the specialist butterfly and moth forum here, which gets a lot more butterfly specialists than this one does, or there's a forum at UK Butterflies.

Clouded yellows are famously near-impossible to be sure of, but with the eye of faith I can convince myself that the second image would show traces of the dark bands round the edge of the upper side of the lower wing if this was either of the other two species which ever show up in the UK. I wouldn't stake my life on the ID even if I were a butterfly specialist, but there's certainly nothing in the photos that would rule out Berger's.

The apex of the fore wing looks a bit to sharp when coupled with the almost straight outer margin which almost always indicates Pale CY to me.

Chris

Thanks Swindon Addik and Chris for the help :t: