19.07.2012

153 species seen on our Butterflies of the Balkans tour

Our last butterfly tour – the Butterflies of the Balkans – Bulgaria, Macedonia and Greece has just finished and the total number of species seen was 153! To our knowledge it is a record number of species seen on a tour with that length (15 days) in this part of the world.
Highlights were Cynthia’s Fritillary, Macedonian Grayling, Higgin’s Anomalous Blue, Black Ringlet and many more. Perhaps the most unexpected one was the very rare Lesser Lattice Brown, a butterfly that we never saw on our tours before.

It is clear now that this year is excellent for butterflies – many of the rare and difficult species are easy to find and they are in good numbers. The commoner species on the other side are numerous.
Because of this, all the four butterfly trips we ran this year were very successful. The trip reports will be on the website by the end of July, as well as our program for 2013.