Apatura from around the world

I saw this on facetube and thought you Purple souls might like it! There are 5 species within the genus Apatura...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/649414648579768/permalink/863432847177946/

Lord, thou hast brought us to our journey's end...

Here's my last Knepp Emperor of the year (unless, perchance, a second brood ensues...) - a ridiculously worn and torn male who was behaving badly in a territory called Gratuitous Violence on Monday:- 

I am, though, seriously worried about the impact of drought on the butterfly, especially at Knepp when most of the breeding sallows are young and relatively shallow rooted. 

Thundery showers are forecast for that region on Friday, and are desperately needed (though first instar larvae are prone to being washed off the leaves by heavy rain).

Please, pray for rain in the Empire...

Audience with an empress

I stole a few hours at Knepp on Saturday 21^st July and saw eight emperors. 

The best moment occurred in a sallow glade just off Green Lane. Trevor Apsley and I shared a wonderful fifteen minutes or so with a graceful empress who came floating out of an oak like a small paper kite to flit and glide in a flowery clearing. She sailed around us at chest height and lower, frequently stopping to take salts from the baked ground with a proboscis like a garden hose. She was a whopper, a spectacular insect. This was my most thrilling encounter with an empress. She was in reasonable condition but though she seemed serene she was in reality just spent, and as she drifted off into the sallow we wondered how many days she had left.

To end on a happy note, in Green Lane I met a couple called Christina and Roger. As very recent emperor converts they had missed peak Knepp but were hoping for their first emperor. When I bumped into them for a second time they told me they hadn’t clocked any, but had at least photographed a white admiral on the ground. They showed me the photo, and I was delighted to be able to congratulate them on their mistake - it wasn’t a white admiral. ;) 

Here's "my" empress. 

Ending Now...

Emperors are now definitely winding down at Knepp. I suspect they'll be almost impossible to find by Wednesday. 

I'm heading home tomorrow evening - but I've got one last trick up my sleeve, I'm flying off to the eastern (Catalan) Pyrenees to work a colony 1300m up, which is only just starting to emerge now!

Today, I struggled to see five females and eight frayed males at Knepp, all of them pensioners. The sap bleed branch in a spot known as Skinhead Alley (it's a good spot for violent males) was being visited by four females -

Note the hornet on the right. Fresh Emperors beat the hornets up, but old one's get displaced by them.

This is what I'm worried about: massive fall of sub-canopy leaves in the Knepp sallow thickets (these bushes are about 15 years old, in what was an arable field, the older sallows in the laggs and close to the ponds are fine) -

I'm worried because there are at least five days of >30C temperatures to come, and no rain is forecast (it last rained at Knepp on 31st May). 

Purple Emperor Season Without End...

Folks, we're starting to enter Paradise: this Emperor season simply wont end, at least at Knepp.  I managed 21 today, including seven females.  

The males are seriously faded and torn now, and are active for only a couple of hours or so, from about 1pm, on territory. I witnessed a clash of three males. 

Neil and I watched an exhausted female visit a sap run, then collapse on to the nearest sallow. I doubt she'll make tomorrow -

Meanwhile, these girls were getting tanked up on a sap bleed alongside a Comma -

Purple Emperor season without end, Amen!

PS  We didn't get any rain, again; and the Brown Hairstreak remains surprisingly scarce.

Next Season

Rather too dull for Emperor activity at Knepp today, so I went egging instead.

One alpha sallow produced two early-second instar (horned) larvae, a skin-changing first instar larva, a just-hatched larva, two about-to-hatch eggs and a classic yellow-brown egg, and an egg case base with no sign of the larva. Total = 8.

I think I last found horned larvae in July back in 1976 but will check my diaries when I get home. Whatever, eggs are obviously hatching very fast in this heat and larvae are then racing through the highly vulnerable first instar, which is all good news. The bad news, though, is that no rain has shown up, and the sallows desperately need some. 

For the record, four dog walkers went past me whilst I was up my sallow. None noticed a bloke 4-5m up a tree...

Knepp: Day 35

Purple Emperors have now been out here for five long weeks. 

Today, I managed to see 19, which would be a decent tally for a day at peak season at nearly all Emperor sites...

They are becoming increasingly localised, and the males are only active for two or three hours during the early to mid- afternoon period. The females are either egging or sitting around doing nothing.  

I think they'll peter out here on about Monday. Meanwhile, we carry on fighting...