New butterfly species for Lithuania and the Baltics (1 Viewer)

[etudiant]

I have a passive interest already in and do turn over any logs etc that I find. Book and ID resources are the problem here!

Northern Dune Tiger is very common here, they flush in small squadrons on the trail as I walk. This is a rare Beetle in my native UK, found at only about 3 sites nationwide.

http://www.surfbirds.com/gallery/share_photo.php?imgname=20160617085246088.jpg



Andy

Tiger beetles are the butterflies of the beetle world, brilliant colors and super agile, just that they are ravening predators... They are well named.

Would have thought that a woodlands environment such as you describe would offer cerambycids and buprestids, but perhaps your woods are not old enough. Fortunately there is a lifetime of adventure available just by turning over rocks and stuff...
Do not know what would be a good field guide for coleoptera in western Russia. There was a good research base in Soviet times, but afaik there was nothing published for the interested amateur.
In Quebec, the religious orders ran naturalist camps and produced excellent guides to the more common species as part of that effort. Perhaps the Young Pioneers organization did something similar in Russia. Hope your Russian is good and that there is an archive someplace that you can find.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Tiger beetles are the butterflies of the beetle world, brilliant colors and super agile, just that they are ravening predators... They are well named.

Would have thought that a woodlands environment such as you describe would offer cerambycids and buprestids, but perhaps your woods are not old enough. Fortunately there is a lifetime of adventure available just by turning over rocks and stuff...
Do not know what would be a good field guide for coleoptera in western Russia. There was a good research base in Soviet times, but afaik there was nothing published for the interested amateur.
In Quebec, the religious orders ran naturalist camps and produced excellent guides to the more common species as part of that effort. Perhaps the Young Pioneers organization did something similar in Russia. Hope your Russian is good and that there is an archive someplace that you can find.

The problem with the forests here is that most is swamp forest and is inaccessible!

There is little available info for amateur naturalists of any kind in Russia never mind beetles. None of the European field guides for butterflies or birds cover Russia even though this part is in Europe.

Andy

 

[etudiant]

The problem with the forests here is that most is swamp forest and is inaccessible!

There is little available info for amateur naturalists of any kind in Russia never mind beetles. None of the European field guides for butterflies or birds cover Russia even though this part is in Europe.

Andy

There is a market void here.
Russia is pathetically badly served in terms of nature documentation.
There are multiple field guides to remote spots such as Borneo, but no one offers one for Russia. In line with that, there may be a trustworthy organization that offers Russia tours other than for really remote sea based travel to Kamchatka or Wrangel Island, but if they exist, they keep a very low profile.
Any chance you might want to start writing such a guide?

 

[Andy Adcock]

There is a market void here.
Russia is pathetically badly served in terms of nature documentation.
There are multiple field guides to remote spots such as Borneo, but no one offers one for Russia. In line with that, there may be a trustworthy organization that offers Russia tours other than for really remote sea based travel to Kamchatka or Wrangel Island, but if they exist, they keep a very low profile.
Any chance you might want to start writing such a guide?

There are tours for hunters but none for wildlife generally.This is I suspect due to multiple reasons.

1. Species availability, nothing here that can't be seen elsewhere.
2. Scale, Russia is HUGE
3 Infrastructure, outside of Moscow and St Petersburg there is none.
4 Logistics, visa and cost etc, Russia don't make it easy for tourists, everyone now has to travel to one of three regional centres in the UK to be finger printed for visa applications and this is for EVERY visit. Language, very few outside the main tourist areas speak English.
5 Cost, Russia isn't a cheap country, English speaking guide, local guide, specialist guide etc plus interior travel make this a destination for only the wealthy sadly if you were to do it guided.

It would take someone with far greater expertise and experience than me to write or organise Anything.

The cost of research and the vast, physical distances, non existent road systems mean that this is very unlikely to ever happen. Just 200 miles East of where I am, you soon start to run out of what we would call roads. People don't understand the sheer size of Russia until they actually look at a map. This is a country which could accommodate the USA, Canada and Australia and it's probably 10-15% smaller than it was as the Soviet Union!



Andy

 

[Jos Stratford]

Going back to Meleager's Blue...

Incredibly I found a second individual this weekend - a male about 550 metres from the female location (which I failed to locate again). Despite the species never being recorded in Lithuania, this strengthens the possibility of a small population of this non-migrant actually exising in the area or immediately adjacent in Belarus.

 

[Andy Adcock]

Going back to Meleager's Blue...

Incredibly I found a second individual this weekend - a male about 550 metres from the female location (which I failed to locate again). Despite the species never being recorded in Lithuania, this strengthens the possibility of a small population of this non-migrant actually exising in the area or immediately adjacent in Belarus.

You're lucky with the weather, housebound here by torrential rain again, more like the tropics during monsoon.

I'd have thought that the Blue is definitely a breeding population if there's more than one and they're non migratory?

A

 

[rosbifs]

Sounds that way Andy a new breeding species to the baltics!!

I should adopt a bit more time to butterflies here - we are in a fairly diverse area - but tend to stick to the classics. Gavarnie Blue beautiful plumage.

Good work Jos...

 

[Jos Stratford]

Was a cloudy day, so rather poor pictures. But here is the male, a far less distinctive butterfly than the female...

 

[Jos Stratford]

And from the other side...

 

[Andy Adcock]

The male could easily be overlooked I think and written off as e.g Green-underside?


A