Our stay at Maussane-les-Alpilles was four nights, between 18th and 21st June. It is a worthwhile stop for those with a dragonfly fixation.
My first interest, being a dragonfly anorak, was what we call a Norfolk Hawker which in France is more appropriately called a Green-eyed Hawker. Either way it is Isoaeschna isoceles (and the missing middle “s” is correct). The curiosity here is that this specimen sported distinct antehumeral stripes which are missing from those in Britain. This variation is noted from Greece and Turkey and has been described as a subspecies called antehumeralis, That is still subject to debate, though. Clearly this variation also exists in southern France.
On a very shady, rather hidden stream which we’d discovered on a previous visit, we started seeing different looking Hawker-type dragonflies. These we eventually managed to narrow down to being Dusk Hawkers/Western Spectres (Boyeria irene). I’d seen these beasts before on the Mausanne campsite and at the Peau de Meau but they never settled and I never managed to get a picture of one. Over the course of three late afternoons these frustrating critters once again failed to settle. I did, however, manage to use a tripod and a bit of modern technology in my Olympus camera to snag a vaguely recognizable shot in flight. The shade was very deep so the ISO was necessarily high but it sort of worked.
Many years ago whilst walking the Corfu Trail from south to north, we had a rest day from walking. I used almost the whole of this day to try and capture one of the hundreds of Cleopatra butterflies (Gonepteryx cleopatra) with wings open. Like our related Brimstone butterflies (Gonepteryx rhamni), this species never sits with its wings open. With an older camera having autofocus too slow to cope, I resorted to manually pre-focusing and trying to catch the wings as the butterflies took off. I kept three shots out of about 100. This time I pressed my Olympus’s technology into service again and did much better much more quickly.
We took a longer electro-steed ride out to the remains of a Roman aqueduct to go, “oo, ah” at piles of old stones. Well, it was an excuse for a bike ride. We played chase with a Roller on the way out but it was a lot faster than I was and a distant shot with too small a lens was all I could manage, so don’t look for it here.
Our return passed through Le Paradou where there was a handy-dandy bar with a tree-shaded square opposite. Naturally, given 35+°C the temptation was too great and we sat under the shade trees supping a beer or two. A few things fell out of the trees onto us and one got Francine very excited. Since it was on me, she had to use my camera, unfamiliar to her, to snag it. This utterly delightful little creature, just about 1cm long, is a mantis nymph, though just which species of mantis I know not. What a wonderful little miniature, though.
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