Beitostølen summer 2023 Butterflies

When in Beitostølen I find that butterflies take up more and more of time although I think that I have now found pretty much every species I can hope to see in the area with the exception of Large Grizzled Skipper (alvesmyger) of which there a couple of old records and which I am sure can be found if I search suitable habitat.

Butterflies obviously require nice sunny weather to be watched and this year there was more rain than we normally experience but I did have 3 days when conditions were good.

Highlights for me this year was multiple sightings of Large Heath (myrringvinge) and also amazing numbers of Alpine Blues (fjellblåvinge).

male Alpine Blue (fjellblåvinge)

15 licking salts

and here 29 which is more than I had previously ever seen in total!

a Large Heath (myrringvinge)

and the similar but noticeably smaller Small Heath (engringvinge) 

Silver Spotted Skipper (kommasmyger)

which is a lot easier to identify from below. These belong to the subspecies catena which is the mountain form

Moorland Clouded Yellow (myrgulvinge)

and another one

Cranberry Fritillary (myrperlemorvinge)

male Scarce Copper (oransjegullvinge)

and female Purple-edged Copper (purpurgullvinge)

and another female Purple-edged. Interestingly I only saw males of Scarce and female of Purple-edged and often in the same place

a Northern Brown Argus (sankthasblåvinge) and a Geranium Argus (bun blåvinge). This year I saw only a few of the former but many of the later.

a Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary (brunflekket perlemorvinge)

and an abberation of the same species with very heavily marked upperwings

Small Blues (dvergblåvinge)

I have only seen this species here once before and the underwing very closely resembles that of Mazerine Blue (engblåvinge) which is the commonest blue in the area and which can vary enormously in size.

here is Amanda. The row of black spots on the upperwing curves over at the top whereas they continue in a straight line in the Small