Common Blue [L’icaro o argo azzurro] (Polyommatus icarus) on Lavender beside the swimming pool of the lovely agriturismo farm, Rocca di Cispiano, where we stayed in Chianti. Species names are shown in English [Italian] and (Latin). Pool area: not an obvious place for butterflies, but the clever planting of a Lavender border made all the difference
Scarce Swallowtail [Il podalirio] (Iphiclides podalirius), a large butterfly with a distinctive sailing flight, taking nectar beside the poolSilver-Washed Fritillary [La pafia o Tabacco di Spagna o Fritillaria] (Argynnis paphia), a handsome and distinctive species
Tuscan landscape (Chianti): hilltop farms, Vines (bright green rows), Olive trees (blue-gray trees in rows), low mixed maquis (macchia mediterranea) forest, Cypress trees on left skyline
Nine-Spotted Moth [La fegea] (Amata phegea) frequently visited the lavender border and other flowers. It was once also found in England; Chris Manley suggests that global warming might allow it to return (a possible silver lining to that cloud).Brimstone [La cedronella] (Gonepteryx rhamni)Hummingbird Hawkmoth [La sfinge del galio o sfinge colibrì] (Macroglossum stellatarum), darting from flower to flower each time just before I managed to focus the little camera …
Bee-fly (neither a bee nor a butterfly) half-hovering to take nectar, making a particularly loud buzz
Meadow Brown [La Giurtina o Maniola comune] (Maniola jurtina)Red Admiral [L’atalanta] (Vanessa atalanta). It has a chunk out of its right hindwing, showing it survived an attack.The enormous, fearsome, but non-aggressive Mammoth Wasp, [La vespa mammuth] (Megascolia maculata), on Wild Artichoke. Presumably its sting would be serious but I can’t find any record of people being stung by this peaceful insect.
A Mammoth Wasp visiting a potted Hottentot Fig, with a wide view of the Tuscan landscapeOak Yellow Underwing Moth (Catocala nymphagoga) on shower beside pool
The bushes by the pool attracted this Southern White Admiral [Il Silvano azzurro o Piccolo silvano] (Limenitis reducta)Swallows [La rondine] (Hirundo rustica) swooping over the pool at sunset. Many pairs nest in the farm buildings; there were two active nests inside our porch.
Perfect butterfly habitat a short walk from the agriturismo: meadow grass by Olive groves with Scabious (blue) and St John’s Wort (yellow). There’s a tiny Queen of Spain Fritillary in the picture!
Sloe Hairstreak [Satiro dell’acacia] (Satyrium acaciae)Swallowtail [Il macaone] (Papilio machaon); this one at Brolio castle, but there were many near the agriturismo tooQueen of Spain Fritillary [La latonia] (Issoria lathonia) on ScabiousClouded Yellow [La crocea, La limoncella, Il postiglione] (Colias croceus) pair in nuptial flightMarbled White [La galatea] (Melanargia galathea)Probably Eastern Burnet Moth [La carniolica] (Zygaena cf carniolica) on Scabious.
Zygaena cf carniolica taking flight. The brilliant red underwings give a strong and honest warning signal of the insect’s inedibility.Eastern Dappled White [L’ausonia] (Euchloe ausonia)Olive Grove and Spanish Broom. Butterflies skittered about the flowery meadow below the trees.
Wall Brown [La megera] (Lasiommata megera)A lizard, probably the Common Wall Lizard [Lucertola muraiola] (Podarcis muralis) given its dark chin, scurried along the wooden rail at the edge of the pool area.
A very battered Oak Yellow Underwing that has survived an attack by a bird
Great Banded Grayling [Circe, Satiro circe, Sileno] (Brintesia circe)Dingy Skipper [Tagete] (Erynnis tages). There were Large Skippers about too, but their habit of perching on slender waving grasses made photography hopeless.Painted Lady [La vanessa del cardo] (Vanessa cardui)Spotted Fritillary [La didima] (Melitaea didyma)
Some rather fine wasps apparently attempting to mate
Although it was a bit late in the season for them, we saw half-a-dozen fireflies in the woods by the strada bianca (unmetalled road) and among the olive trees, half an hour or so after sunset.
I made no attempt to photograph birds, but a Hoopoe flew over the pool, and Turtle Doves cooed nearby. A Cuckoo called from far across the valley; a Song Thrush sang; a Green Woodpecker gave its laughing cry. White Wagtails flew up to the roof, and Italian Sparrows hopped about. Goldfinches twittered in the trees. A Sardinian Warbler raced for the cover of the trees, its black crown conspicuous; a Melodious Warbler sang from the woods. In the night, an owl called, it could have been a Scops Owl. And of course, Cicadas buzzed and Bush Crickets chirped all day long.
Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage, by Peter Forbes
The effect of natural selection on how animals look has attracted the
attention of naturalists from the birth of modern natural history, starting even before Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Visual appearance can affect an animal’s survival in numerous ways.
Camouflage makes it hard for predators to find a prey animal; warning coloration advertises that a potential prey is poisonous or distasteful; Batesian mimicry allows an edible species to pretend to be distasteful; and Müllerian mimicry allows a distasteful species to be sampled less often by young inexperienced predators, by resembling a more common distasteful species. And within these areas, there are infinite possibilities.
Butterfly Mimicry: mimics on the right, the imitated ‘models’ on the left
But as the cover art suggests, Forbes does not stop there. Camouflage has military uses; and the history of two World Wars reveals extraordinary interactions between naturalists like Hugh Cott (author of the greatest twentieth-century book on camouflage, Adaptive Coloration in Animals, 1940) and Peter Scott with the military – Scott was a naval captain, so he had a foot in both camps.
Much of the book concerns the natural history and biology of butterflies – they include many of nature’s best mimics, and provide incredibly complex examples of visual evolution at work, as the mimic species adapts to each of the many geographic variants of the host or model species. It’s even possible for multiple forms to appear in a single brood. Forbes describes the research workers, their controversies and their heated opinions, right or wrong. Truth wins in the end, but that doesn’t prevent a messy process along the way, just as in evolution.
Today, new light is being shed on the mechanisms of mimicry and coloration in general by evolutionary developmental biology, which Forbes insists on calling “evo devo”. The result of such inquiry will one day be an explanation of the observed, very complex, natural history at multiple levels – genetics, developmental biology, visual appearance, and natural selection, all of which will have to fit together exactly. Pieces of the puzzle are becoming clear, as in the genetic and developmental mechanisms for producing eye-spots. These can be “impressionistic” – they do not have to mimic a cat’s face, as long as a wing-flash gives a bird predator an illusion of eyes-suddenly-jumping-out-at-me; for we suppose that birds have
an escape reaction triggered in some such way. Thus the explanation must take into account ecology too – the behaviours of both predator and prey are needed to explain why eyespots evolved.
Forbes can’t resist putting an artistic and literary take on the natural
history and science: Sir Ernst Gombrich the art historian was deeply
fascinated by visual illusion, while novelists like Vladimir Nabokov (a keen naturalist) were intrigued by truth and lies. Sometimes the analogies go rather far from natural history (electronic warfare is a case in point: it may be deception but it certainly isn’t visual). But Forbes is always precise, and invariably entertaining.
