Austrian Butterfly Sp for ID (1 Viewer)

There seem to be several requests for ID at the moment so I'll add another!

A recent thread on CommonBlue/Brown Argus butterfly ID features prompted me to search out these two shots of a butterfly taken on the lower part of the Grossglockner in Austria in July 2000.

Although the butterfly is obviously well worn there ought to be enough features there to pin it down but I can't find anything to match.

It has similarly placed spots on the underside of the hindwing to those mentioned for Brown Argus in that Common Blue/Brown Argus thread but it's clearly not one of those as nothing else really fits that species including the size which was at the large end of the scale for blue butterflies.

The blue 'dusting' on the underside together with the brown upper wings with prominent 'scent' marks and orange and black markings around the edge should be distinctive but I'm obviously missing something here!

Anybody got any ideas?

TAI

Adey

OK, OK, I know it's not easy - I've scratched my head over it, on and off, for 4 years now!

There was a mixture of habitat around, rather than the open Alpine meadows which were higher up the mountain.

Adey Baker said:

OK, OK, I know it's not easy - I've scratched my head over it, on and off, for 4 years now!

There was a mixture of habitat around, rather than the open Alpine meadows which were higher up the mountain.

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Hi Adey,
I think your best bet is to Email it to an Australian Natural History Museum asking for an ID. Unless of course, you can find an Australian entomologist over here. I don't even know how many 'Blue' species there are down under.

Harry.

Its Austrian I believe!

Yes, Austrian - I've gone through my Mitchell/beazley pocket guide which has just about every European butterfly illustrated and also checked out several good websites with lots of photos but nothing seems to fit - it's probably one of those 'When you see it you'll know' types but I've just not come across anything which says 'Eureka!' (yet)

Adey Baker said:

Yes, Austrian - I've gone through my Mitchell/beazley pocket guide which has just about every European butterfly illustrated and also checked out several good websites with lots of photos but nothing seems to fit - it's probably one of those 'When you see it you'll know' types but I've just not come across anything which says 'Eureka!' (yet)

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Ooops,
Must make an appointment to get my eyes tested, sorry Adey,Still no idea what species it is as I don't 'do' continental species.

Harry

I only do Continental ones for about one wek per year, Harry, whilst on holiday - birds, dragonflies and butterflies, whatever I can get without my wife getting too bored is a bonus!

This puts the pressure on, a bit, so any decent photos that I can get will hopefully help me sort out the ID's when I get back home! I can, usually, sort out most of them (I've often got a good idea on their ID to start with) but there's always the odd one that just baffles me.

Of course, some species are very similar to one another, several of the Blues, Ringlets, Fritillaries, etc., so it's obviously a fairly specialised area but there's always a chance that someone may recognise it.

No matter how beautiful a creature or how interesting its activity, we're never really happy until we can put a name to it, are we?!!

How about Blue Argus?

I'm not much good on these and well out of practice too.....have seen this in Greece but i think it may be too small.......

Adey Baker said:

I only do Continental ones for about one wek per year, Harry, whilst on holiday - birds, dragonflies and butterflies, whatever I can get without my wife getting too bored is a bonus!

This puts the pressure on, a bit, so any decent photos that I can get will hopefully help me sort out the ID's when I get back home! I can, usually, sort out most of them (I've often got a good idea on their ID to start with) but there's always the odd one that just baffles me.

Of course, some species are very similar to one another, several of the Blues, Ringlets, Fritillaries, etc., so it's obviously a fairly specialised area but there's always a chance that someone may recognise it.

No matter how beautiful a creature or how interesting its activity, we're never really happy until we can put a name to it, are we?!!

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Agreed Adey,

Harry.

Tim Allwood said:

How about Blue Argus?

I'm not much good on these and well out of practice too.....have seen this in Greece but i think it may be too small.......

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This was the closest that I could find purely on illustrations in my book but it's only given as 'Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece'

Former Yugoslavia and Austria have common border so not impossible perhaps.....

was lucky to live in north-west Greece for a time in my 20s. It was great for butterflies Adey (and plants etc.) as well as birds incl. Pygmy Cormorant, Dalmatian Pelican, Fudge Duck etc. Would make a good place for a holiday as there's plenty to do to keep everyone happy!

and the food and beer are to die for......

My wife doesn't like flying so holiday destinations are restricted to how far coach tours reach! - that still leaves lots of options, though. I've seen severals raptors actually from the coach windows and also had such diverse birds as Flamingos in the Camargue and Alpine Chough, Golden Eagle and Snow Finch high on the Grossglockner plus lots of butterflies on that mountain and in the Dolomites, etc.

Hi Adey

I hated flying for quite a while too....had to really bite the bullet on a few occasions but i've got used to it now thankfully and enjoy it. Some good boat trips out there too perhaps.....Scandinavia, Madeira, Canaries etc.....some cracking seabird potential at the latter two

And some of the coach tours do northern Spain via the 'Pride of Bilbao'...

If there's room on the coach most drivers don't mind you bringing back plenty of cheap booze - I prefer to buy the local wines wherever we're staying but they'll often pull into one of the booze-supermarkets in Calais if time permits - you can't do that in a plane!

Mind you, my son recently went to LA and the photos his girlfriend took out of the window of Greenland, Canada, etc., were superb - they sure beat the endless prairie-type landscape of northern France through the coach window!

Hi Adey - An interesting puzzle

Having the benefit of possessing a copy of Princeton Field Guides version of Tolman/Lewington'd Butterflies of Europe, with more text than Mitchell Beazley, distribution maps, illustrations of subspecies etc I would like to suggest the route to a possible solution.

Firstly, in addition to the size issue, there appear to be two features to your butterfly that do not seem to fit with any of the possible candidates amongst the Blues. These are the distinctive dark markings to the upperwings and the separation of the two upper spots in the central cluster of three spots on the underwing. The large size and these two factors led me to consider the possibility that your specimen is in fact in another group within the Lycaenidae, i.e. the Coppers. I feel that this is further supported by what appears to be a very faint line of additional spots to the left of the largest spot on the left upperwing.

My favourite candidate is Purple-edged Copper Lycaena (Palaeochrysophanus in M&B) hippothoe, subspecies eurydame, which is found in Austria. Tolman describes the female upperside as being uniform brown, sometimes with vestigial orange submarginal markings. The illustration looks very similar to your butterfly without the orange markings. However, the illustration of the underwing of L h. eurydame does not look very much like your specimen, although the one of L. h. stiberi (found in Fennoscandia) looks very similar.

I would suggest that Sooty Copper Lycaena tityrus subalpinus and Purple-shot Copper L. alciphron alciphron are alternative candidates also worth considering.

Two upperwing photos of female L. h. eurydame can be viewed at: http://www.leps.it/indexjs.htm?SpeciesPages/LycaenHippot.htm

I was going to conclude by recommending the purchase of the Princeton Guide. However, I note that Collins have recently published a new edition of the British version of Tolman/Lewington 'The Butterflies of Britain and Europe'. At £17.50 (reduced from £25) from Amazon and with 528 pages compared to 320 in the Princeton, this has got to be the one to go for.

I hope that you find my suggestions helpful.

Regards
Graham

Thanks for taking the time for a good look around, Graham

I had originally dismissed the Coppers as most (including Purple-edged) seemed to have that sort of pointed, vestigial-tail shape on the rear edge of the hind wing in the illustrations in my book which my butterfly clearly doesn't - however some of those photos on the 'leps' site are clearly not showing this feature!

The very bottom shot definitely looks closer to mine than any 'Blues' that I've seen - all I need now is an underwing pattern of this variable species to match mine.

I've got a link to the French Amazon website for the Tolman/Lewington book but if there's a new version coming out in this country then I'll definitely invest in this book - I would have bought it already from France but my French isn't quite as good as I thought it was as I'm not sure which links to follow to buy it!

Adey

Ok Adey - here's the link to the book on Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...3139/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_10_2/202-9116005-7512646

Graham

Thanks Graham

Order sent!

Adey

Book arrived yesterday morning - very good, much better than my 'pocket guide'!

Adey Baker said:

Book arrived yesterday morning - very good, much better than my 'pocket guide'!

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I thought you'd like it, and what a quick delivery! (I've been listening to the test match).

Regards
Graham