First Butterfly of the Year

[Heath Fred]

	I finally saw my first butterfly for the year here in Switzerland.
It was a Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae..some think it this is
conspecific with Milbert's Tortoiseshell from North America) . It was at the
terminal for the highest railroad (cog train) in Europe at a place called
Jungfraujoch at 11,500 feet (3550 meters) altitude in the Swiss Alps. We
were on an inside observation deck on a side where the glass was completely
covered in snow/ice, when my daughter called my attention to a butterfly. At
first,  I assumed she was hallucinating due to the thin air.  The snow had
melted away from direct contact with the window and there in a little
crevice in the ice at eye level sat the butterfly. Although it was upright,
I wondered if it was not frozen to death. 	However, a few minutes later
when we wandering around to the outside view points, we saw several of these
butterflies zipping around what was mainly snow and ice with a few rock
outcrops, some of which had a little lichen and/or moss growing on them (the
rocks, not the butterflies). They were not obviously migrating as they flew
in all directions, sometimes chasing each other. Oh, one other thing: the
temperature was minus 6 degrees Celsius (plus 21 degrees Fahrenheit) during
this observation. I guess the solar radiation at that altitude is a enough
to warm them up. 
---Fred

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/private/leps-l/attachments/20000301/4ba932c0/attachment.html