Tuesday 10th December 2013

Mallow Skippers

In my last post, long ago, I mentioned that I would be brightening up the winter months with an assessment of those butterfly species which I did not manage to locate in 2013, but which I would normally have been able to find. The first of these, chronologically speaking in terms of when I should have seen it in the year, is a species which could not really be expected to brighten up the winter months, as it is a rather dull, but nonetheless charming species, the Mallow Skipper, Carcharodus alceae. I usually expect to see a few Mallow Skippers each year, either in northern France or in southern Belgium, yet somehow this year I missed them. This was in part due to the cold spring, which held everything back, and the few sunny days did not fall on weekends when I was able to visit the haunts of this unobtrusive butterfly during its spring generation. During the summer I was away in Scotland, where Mallow Skippers do not occur, and despite various visits to suitable areas in September and October, I was unable to locate any individuals of this species, which never occurs in large numbers. I did find several Mallow plants, Malva sp., but there appeared to be no adult butterflies nor eggs, which are relatively conspicuous and laid on the upper surface of the leaves.

A short video clip of Mallow Skippers which I filmed in Belgium in 2007 appears below:

Had I seen Mallow Skipper this year, and the last absentee I described, the Large Tortoiseshell, Nymphalis polychloros, my total for 2013 would have been: 79 species!