Same procedure as last year, same procedure as every year

The first week of school summer holdiays is, as always, being spent at the cabin we are so lucky to be able to use near Hulvik. No seawatching to mention and few birds although the now to be expected close encounters with Nightjars were as good as ever.

Nightjar (nattravn). Definitely one of my better efforts and taken before sunset although we were in shade at 22:34

It is bugs that are my main interest here and a 30 minute drive brought me a new dragonfly species with a single male Club-tailed Dragonfly (klubbeelvelibelle) showing along a muddy slow moving river (a habitat that is very unusual in Norway).

My first club-tailed Dragonfly (klubbeelvelibelle)

I also added a new species of butterfly to my list but didn’t realise at the time and that despite it being one of the largest and most spectacular species there is. I was walking my usual butterfly route here and only 50 meters from the car saw what I thought was a Poplar Admiral (ospesommerfugl). I can still count my encounters with this species on one hand so quickly raised my camera only to find the battery was flat. I went to my pocket for my mobile only to realise I’d left it in the car…. I jogged back to the car to remember that I had not bought the bag with a spare battery but I did have the superzoom in the car (where it always resides). Taking this (and my phone) and jogging back - who would have thought butterfly watching would be good exercise - I found the butterfly again a bit further along the path where it was sucking up some sort of sustenance. I was most interest in taking video of it but did note some markings that I didn’t remember from before and was also a bit puzzled by how blue the upperwing looked at some angles… It was only when I got home though that I looked at some images and realised I had in fact been watching a Purple Emporer (stor purpurkåpe). This is a species that was first seen in Norway as recently as 2019 and which has been recorded under 50 times since.

A bit embarassing that I did not recognise it there and then and I realise now that I thought it was a much larger species than it actually is.

Purple Emperor (stor purpurkåpe)

Look at that blue colour

And then a slight change of angle and it just looks black

This is one of those posts done on my iphone blog posts that I am sure will come out looking rather strange with different font sizes but with luck I’ll post something better later once I’m home.