Doings in the Pyrenees...

The Purple Emperor population has crashed in the Catalan Pyrenees. We are struggling to see any, whereas this time last year I counted fifty in a day and photographed three feeding together on sap flowing from a weevil-damaged Woolly Thistle bud. And the butterfly is definitely at peak season now.

Not sure why, yet, but suspect that adults got knocked out just after I left last early August by torrential thunderstorms, and scarcely laid any eggs; and / or tiny L1 larvae got washed off leaf surfaces by other thunderstorms. We are checking the local weather data. Certainly, there were a number of deluges here last August.  

Maybe the butterfly has different population dynamics up here?

Today, I found a colony 1650m up north of Setcases, in a valley bottom. Here's the habitat -