Those Challenging Satyrs

If a group of butterflies comprises 2400 species, we can expect some identification challenges! In the Spanish Pyrenees, I found plenty.

The upper Hecho Valley is rife with puzzling satyrs.

Satyrs are a subfamily of nymphalids, or brush-footed butterflies. These are the pearly-eyes, the wood nymphs, the heaths, the arctics, the alpines. Most of them haunt shady woodlands or alpine fellfields. Tropical satyrs like Pierella can be spectacular.

Great Banded Grayling (Kanetisa circe)

The first Great Banded Grayling I saw looked so much like a big admiral that I initially skipped over the satyrs in trying to identify it. Like many of the other local butterflies, it was nectaring on Pyrenean Eryngo.

Okay, let's try some browns.

The Meadow Brown seems pretty straightforward––although in the Land of Satyrs, that's no guarantee I got it right! We had previously seen it in Poland as well.

Meadow Brown (Maniola jurtina)

This Large Wall Brown doesn't quite match the field guide pictures, but it's close. A big part of the problem is that many species are variable across their large ranges. Very focused local field guides are hugely helpful, where they exist.

Large Wall Brown (Lasiommata maera)

The heaths are lovely small satyrs. Dusky and Pearly Heaths are similar. I'm basing this ID on the very indistinct eyespot on the forewing, even though most Pearly Heaths sport a wider white flash on the hindwing. Their larvae feed on grasses.

Pearly Heath (Coenonympha arcania)

Now we come to the ringlets (which in North America we call the alpines)––genus Erebia, with no fewer than 13 plates in the field guide! In North America we have a hefty 7 species; in Europe, 46 species, plus a wide array of subspecies. That's an astonishing radiation for one genus of butterflies!

I've always liked the alpines, in part because I love the alpine regions where they live. And how lucky is this? The ringlet which allowed the best photography appears to have been a distinctive one, the Piedmont Ringlet, with its very dark under hindwing and bright topside.

A Piedmont Ringlet (Erebia meolans), below shown probing a shoe which must have wandered through something especially delectable.

But the graylings were at the top of the heap for confusing, and especially the choice between Rock or Woodland Grayling. I'm going with Rock Grayling here, based on matches with photos at websites such as www.eurobutterflies.com. The bold white band on the hindwing seems broader and the outer border of that band doesn't mirror the irregularities of the inner border. I welcome comments from lepidopterists!

Rock Grayling (Hipparchia alcyone)

Grayling (Hipparchia semele)

The Grayling is the most widespread of Europe's big Hipparchia satyrs. And it is one that isn't too hard to identify... maybe.

Pyranees Butterfly Sampler

Hiking took Wendi, Leona, Alan and me into various nooks of the upper Hecho Valley, a splendid region of the Pyrenees, and one replete with butterflies and flowers. These public trails wind through sectors of the Parque Natural Valles Occidentales, or Western Valleys Natural Park. 

In three days, we barely sampled the miles of trails that you could walk. All were in excellent condition. One, straight up the road from Hotel Uson and past Boca de Infierno, passes dolmens and other artifacts of prehistoric humanity.

The butterflies were exceptional! Here are a few:

Old World Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) in the upper Hecho Valley

(Photos by Narca)

The Old World Swallowtail is the type species of the genus Papilio––the first one to be described by Linnaeus, who devised the system of classiflying organisms into related groups. Despite the common name, this swallowtail occurs at higher latitudes across the entire Northern Hemisphere, including North America, so it has a classic Holarctic range. Most of its populations are in good shape, although it is a protected species in some countries like Austria, the UK, and India.

Its cousin, the Apollo, is a tail-less swallowtail, closely related to the parnassians of montane North America. They swoop rapidly across the mountain slopes, and I felt lucky when this one deigned to pause briefly on a composite.

Apollo (Parnassius apollo)

The highly prized Apollo is considered threatened by the IUCN. Finland is among the countries declaring it endangered. Its decline is likely due to a combination of factors, including habitat change and––in some areas––over-collecting. Locally, automobiles are a factor, notably in South Tyrol, Italy. Because the few Apollos remaining in Finland and Sweden are restricted to limestone soils, it is thought that acid rain may also have contributed to their decline. Where limestone moderates the effects of acid rain, this beautiful butterfly continues to soar across the mountain meadows.

Heath Fritillary (Melitaea athalia)

Any real butterfly experts out there, help me out! I think that this is a Heath Fritillary, but frits are subtle beasts, and my field guide is none too clear. If so, it is a species doing well in several parts of Europe, but not in the UK, where it is one of the rarest British butterflies. (After 30 years of conservation efforts, British stewards have seen rebounds at Blean Woods National Nature Reserve.) Its host plants include plantains, speedwells, Common Cow-wheat, foxglove, and toadflax. (Note that in North America we would call these smaller fritillaries checkerspots or crescents, but in Europe they are all called fritillaries.)

A female Large Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanus, a.k.a. O. venatus)

Sunning on a rock is another Palearctic species, which ranges from Europe across Asia to Japan. The Large Skipper is the sole European member of a genus that is more diverse in North America. One of the grass skippers, it is shown here with a leaf of its larval food plant, grass. Like other typical skippers, its caterpillar constructs a leafy shelter by curling a leaf, then stitching it with silk. The young caterpillar hides inside its leaf and feeds.

Skippers are part of a lepidopteran lineage separate from other butterflies. They differ in having hooked antennae clubs and larger eyes. They have a very sturdy look, with strong wing muscles which support wings that are usually smaller in proportion to the rest of their bodies. Within the skipper family, a basic division is between the grass skippers, like the Large Skipper above, and the spread-winged skippers, like the intriguing Marbled Skipper, pictured below.

Marbled Skipper (Carcharodus lavatherae)

Attractive Marbled Skippers are reminiscent of North American powdered skippers. Their host plants are mints, including Stiff Hedgenettle or Yellow Woundwort (Stachys recta) and Mountain Tea (Sideritis scordioides). Both plants are thought to have medicinal value: they contain antioxidants and also counter inflammation and microbes. Sideritis is used in Greek cuisine. These two plant genera are very closely related, and genetic studies may eventually show that they belong in the same genus. 

Many mysteries in the relations between organisms remain to be unraveled! Taxonomists should have job security for a very long time––for as long as the public values a deep understanding of nature.

Wikipedia gives a list of butterflies of the Iberian Peninsula, including some photos and range maps.

Coming next: those challenging satyrs!

The Pyrenees!

The Pyrenees in the Hecho Valley (Photos by Narca)

As we drive into the Hecho Valley in the Pyrenees, nor far from the border between Spain and France, the grand massif rises around us, and wildflowers cloak the slopes. We've arrived at the peak of summer, and it is very, very beautiful.

Hotel Uson, a guesthouse that serves breakfast and dinner

We stay at a rural guesthouse, Hotel Uson, perfectly located for exploring hiking trails and finding Wallcreepers. Our hosts, Lucía and Imanol, point us in the direction we need to go, with explicit instructions for finding a Wallcreeper territory which they are familiar with. All we need to do in order to stay on the right trail is follow the red and white markers.

Easy, right? We've allowed three days, just in case.

The Wallcreeper is a Grail bird, with wings that flash maroon, black and white. It occupies a niche unlike any other bird's: it creeps like a nuthatch across the face of immense cliffs. Perhaps it is the combination of rarity, beauty, and lifestyle that so sets it apart from other birds, and makes seeing one an imperative.

We've looked for Wallcreeper in China. We've looked for it in France. We looked for it once before here––just up the road from Hotel Uson, at Boca de Infierno––in spring, when the site lived up to its name, the "Mouth of Hell." We searched then, with no chance of success, in the teeth of a fierce late spring storm which blew sheets of horizontal snow between us and the cliffs frequented by Wallcreepers.

Trail at Gabardito Reserve

Our first morning we set out from Hotel Uson, following the precise directions to the parking area at Gabardito Reserve, only a few miles away. The red and white flagging is obvious, and we follow it, remarking how well-marked the trail is. But the 2-kilometer walk we're expecting seems a lot longer than 2 kilometers! Hours later we finally find a cliff, and it seems remotely to fit the description of The Territory. It is late afternoon, and we've enjoyed flowers, butterflies, and Lammergeiers. We vow to clarify matters and return!

Lammergeier, or Bearded Vulture, a Grail species for many!

Next day a big footrace happens. It turns out, all that flagging was marking the route of the race. Our markers are little peeling rectangles of red and white, painted at rare intervals on rocks.

But our kind hosts have corrected our idea of where to walk, and we return by a much shorter route to yesterday's cliff, and continue a little further around it. There indeed is the Wallcreeper Cleft-in-the-Cliff––and there is the Wallcreeper! It has been worth every hour of effort over the years!

A Wallcreeper territory

The Wallcreeper frequents a deep cleft in the cliff face. He forages around plants that cling to a precarious perch, and we think we see the location of the nest, as he returns occasionally bearing food. Once he chases the kestrel that is nesting nearby on the same massive rock wall. Once two Wallcreepers are visible.

A female Common Kestrel approaches her nest, showing warm tones in her tail.

The Wallcreepers come and go on foraging forays. They appear tiny on the gray immensity of the cliff face. We spend hours savoring them––and their environs.

Red-billed Choughs also nest nearby.

Griffon Vulture

Griffon Vultures, Red-billed Choughs, Alpine Swifts, Crag Martins, and Lammergeiers all soar overhead.

Coal Tit, a cousin to our chickadees

A Coal Tit hammers on a seed. The very air sparkles. We find an immense lily, which I'm still trying to identify. Butterflies are abundant. (I'll do a separate post on them!)

You'd probably enjoy seeing what a Wallcreeper looks like. I've added an arrow to help. They aren't easy to find, are they?

The Grail (Computer-enhanced Pen & Ink by Narca)

Village Storks

If you drive the back roads (and even not-so-back roads) in Spain during the nesting season, you'll still find the iconic village storks, their immense stick nests decorating church steeples and farm houses. These are White Storks, and they have nested in small Spanish villages for as long as there have been villages––and probably since the ice relinquished its grip on Europe!  Twenty-five-million-year-old fossils from either a White or Black Stork have been found in Kenya. Their lineage is ancient.

White Storks (Ciconia ciconia) nest atop a church's bell tower. 

(Photos by Narca)

Chicks are well cared for. Adults were reported by Lefebvre, Nicolakakis and Boire to deliver water to their young by squeezing moss, thereby dripping water into the beaks of their chicks––an example of tool use.

Juvenile White Storks

The enormous nests often turn into apartment houses: smaller birds like House Sparrows and even European Rollers will claim a nook of the nest for themselves.

With a wingspan up to 8 feet across, these huge, heavy birds depend on thermals to carry them on their long-distance migrations. If you were able to fly south with the migrating storks, you might end up on the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania, striding amongst the Wildebeest and towering over thousands of Thomson's Gazelles.

An adult White Stork, dignified and stately

In the Iberian Peninsula, an estimated 40,000 pairs are considered to be secure, although they have suffered some declines due in part to changes in agricultural practices. Elsewhere, storks have declined in many regions. Conservation and reintroduction efforts in Europe are returning storks to former strongholds like the Rhine River Valley, where their population had declined to the point of vanishing. Perhaps a quarter of the world population nests in Poland. Other very strong centers for breeding White Storks are the Ukraine and Lithuania.

Butterflies in the Sierra de Guadarrama

The Sierra de Guadarrama towers between Madrid and the ancient Roman town of Segovia (our next destination). Forests of pine and Holm Oak cloak the slopes. Any of several wide places in the road give access to hiking trails, and we find a couple of very rewarding walks: Pinar de la Barranca and Los Montes de Valsaín. Both are alive with birdsong and dozens of butterflies.

Pine forest at Pinar de la Barranca (Photos by Narca)

Although it is a treat to renew acquaintance with Spanish birds, the insects really grab my attention. Wendi spots this spectacular, bizarre beast: a Spoonwing, or Thread-winged Antlion. It is a relative of dragonflies. What fun to run across a category of creature that you never suspected to exist!

A Spoonwing, Nemoptera bipennis

The butterflies fall into recognizable groups: fritillaries, pierids, coppers, blues, swallowtails, skippers.

Marbled Fritillary, Brenthis daphne

Brimstone, Gonepteryx rhamni, is a close match to our angled-sulphurs.

(WHY was the venerable name of Brimstone abandoned? Not all of the angled-sulphurs even have angles, and the former name applied to one of ours, Ghost Brimstone, was so much more evocative!)

This lovely pierid, the Black-veined White, has translucent wings.

Leona finds a scintillating treasure trove of three copper species, most nectaring on a rayless composite.

A male Scarce Copper, Lycaena vigaureae, nectaring on Eryngium, is as lustrous as coppers come. (This one was photographed in the Pyrenees.)

A female Purple-shot Copper, Lycaena alciphron gordius

Female Purple-shot Copper

A male Small Copper, Lycaena phlaeas

Small Copper male

Iberian Marbled White, Melanargia lachesis, is actually a satyr.

Satyrs and blues are especially diverse in Europe. In contrast, the skippers are few and much more easily sorted than in North America.

Our short hike at Montes de Valsaín produced a Eurasian Dipper along the stream and this wonderful nymphalid. Those are serious eyespots, enough to startle any predator!

Peacock Butterfly, Inachis io

Art in Madrid

On this trip to Spain, Wendi, Leona, Meeka, Alan and I added a few days in Madrid in order to visit two of its world-class art museums. Usually Alan and I are so taken with wild places that we bypass the human artifacts, but it doesn't really take much encouragement to pull me into an art museum.

Okay, so the birds still catch our eye! Common Swifts ply the skies over Madrid, here seen from our apartment. (Photos by Narca)

Madrid's finest offerings include the Prado and the Thyssen museums. The famous Prado has classic collections, with an emphasis on Spanish art (surprise!) from 1100 to 1910. It also has rich collections of German, Italian, French and British work dating from about 1300 to 1800. There you will see plenty of Old and Newer Masters, including van der Weyden, Memling, Hieronymus Bosch ( think Garden of Earthly Delights!), Brueghel, Dürer, Raphael, Titian, Fra Angelico, Tintoretto, El Greco, Caravaggio, Zurbarán, Murillo, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya––and, yes, Rembrandt. One of the Prado's most famous pieces is Las Meninas by Velasquez, a painting so admired by Picasso that he devoted painting after painting to his interpretations of Las Meninas.

For me the show-stopper was a marble sculpture of a veiled woman's head. Usually I can see how an artist arrived at the final piece, but this bust was completely mystifying. The face was delicately visible beneath the draped veil. Without touching it, I couldn't figure out how the effect had been achieved. How deeply was the marble cut? The very rock appeared translucent, with the face glowing under the marble veil.

As satisfying as it was to see, in the flesh, pieces that I had studied years ago in art history classes, the Prado does not cover my favorite period of art. The Thyssen does!

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum houses the remarkable private collection of a single family, often considered to be the world's most important private art collection. Indeed, it is not to be missed! Spain acquired the collection (valued at about $1 billion) for $350,000,000 in 1992. Out of 1600 works, about 800 are in the main collection, housed across the street from the Prado in the Palace of Villahermosa––itself a beautiful neoclassical building.

The Thyssen collection spans 800 years of mainly European art and is presented chronologically, beginning on the top of three floors with works from the Renaissance and Classical periods, continuing all the way through Cubism, Avant-garde, and Pop Art. Each piece is a carefully-chosen gem by artists that include Van Eyck, Dürer, Holbein (portrait of Henry VIII), Rembrandt (the self-portrait!), Titian, Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, Murillo, Hals, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Miró, Dalí, Mondrian, Hopper, Cézanne, Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, Rodin, and many more.

My favorites at the Thyssen included the French Impressionists and North American painters like O'Keeffe, Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargeant. I was riveted by Van Gogh's self-portrait. Several Degas pieces are outstanding: we are all familiar with his masterful depictions of dancers, but racehorces? I hadn't known of that one, and it's a winner.

As exquisite as the early masterpieces are, it is a great relief to move from their gloomy colors into the fresh, lively colors of the recent era, and into the loose (but still masterful) brush strokes of, say, Homer's beach scene.

I wonder what the actual colors were, at the time the early pieces were painted? Were they really so uniformly dark? Or have aging varnishes and impermanent paints caused them to darken over the centuries?

We try to preserve miracles of accomplishment and for a while may stem the flow of change, but in the end... change comes.

Each of these museums requires at least a day to see, and both are closed on Mondays. You will find it best to buy entry tickets on-line before your visit, to avoid standing in long lines. Or investigate the Madrid Tourist Card, which includes free entry to these museums, as well as other benefits, and is valid for a year.

A Starbucks is strategically located near the museums. (The Starbucks app shows all the locations in Spain, for die-hard connoisseurs.) But we also found, mainly in Barcelona, an incredibly rich, thick Spanish mocha, so do experiment!

The Metro––subway––stop closest to the museums is Atocha on Line 1. We found the Metro easy to use (though visitors are cautioned to be wary of pickpockets). If several people are traveling together, or if you'll use the Metro for a number of trips, it is less expensive to buy one 10-ride ticket and share it. It is fine for more than one person to use that type of ticket. Just pass it back to the next person after you've cleared the turnstyle. (Another Metro line runs from the international airport to downtown Madrid.)

The Plaza Mayor, with living statues and other street performers, was about 4 blocks from our apartment.

As for lodging in Madrid, we found and booked on-line a self-catering apartment in the heart of the old city, near the La Latina Metro stop. This lodging was less than most hotels would cost for the four (at times, five) of us and included a well-supplied kitchen, wireless router for internet, and washing machine. Three nights cost 453 euros, for an apartment that could have slept 7 people in beds (and more in more creatively-contrived berths). Location was excellent.

To contact this company, email info@tourismrent.com. Catalín was our contact, and he spoke excellent English.

Our apartment in Madrid, on Calle de los Estudios

In the sultry summer evenings, we ambled through the neighborhood of our apartment, where tapas bars, street performers and sidewalk artists abound. One fellow, painted gray, impersonated a statue that silently clowned with passers-by.

For food, we alternated between sampling tapas and restaurants, and picking up food at nearby grocery stores. Try the Limón y Nada lemonade! And the ciruela––prune––yogurt. A classic, easy Spanish breakfast is a slice of good baguette bread, spread with olive oil and topped with tomato and cured Spanish ham. Think I'll have some now....

Preview

Greetings, Friends!

Very soon I'll be posting accounts (with photos) of our recent journey to Spain: the Pyrenees at the height of blooms and butterflies, complete with Wallcreepers; the fantastical Gaudi architecture of Barcelona; tips on travel in that marvelous country. But for today, here is a quote from Mark Twain:

"I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened."

As we travel, we learn that most of the potentially upsetting stuff resolves into treasured experiences. When something unexpected occurs, I wake up. What gift, what new possibility, is hidden in this sudden shift, when plans go awry?