Summer's Butterflies - 1

Perhaps it was the unusually long spells of fine weather that brought them out, perhaps it was that the weather enabled us to spend more time in the hills walking, but this has been a good year for spotting butterflies.  The species that follow are not fully representative of West Ardnamurchan's butterfly wealth, as they only include those that sat around long enough to be photographed.  Further, their identification is very tentative, The Diary being an amateur when it comes to insects, and very dependent on an excellent butterfly identification site, UK Butterflies.

This is tentatively identified as a Dark Green Fritillary, one of several we saw through the summer.  There's a large family of Fritillaries, which look much alike to a non-expert, but....

....the beautiful markings on the underside of the wings seems to support the identification.

We saw this individual on the shores of the beautiful Lochan an Dobhrian when we walked there in mid-July.

This may also be a Dark Green Fritillary, though it might as well be either the Pearl-Bordered or High Brown Fritillaries.  It was spotted in a meadow at the top of one of the Ormsaigbeg crofts in July.

This small butterfly is an absolute gem, with its spectacular range of colours - but it was the devil to photograph.  It's a Common Blue, and the species seemed to be most visible during the earlier part of the summer.  Again, this individual was photographed in a meadow at the top of one of the Ormsaigbeg crofts.

When a white butterfly flutters by, it's easy to dismiss it as a 'Cabbage White' and then start worrying about whether its going to land in our vegetable garden, but The Diary is at last beginning to differentiate a few of this broad family.  This one looks like a male Small White,....

....while this may be a Green-Veined White.

Summer's Butterflies - 2, follows later.