Chalkhill Blue and Adonis Blue aberrations.

Bob and Olivier, I've done some of my best collecting late at night or very early in the morning, last time I was in the alps I concentrated on the low areas and woodlands during the day and ascending to a high col at night to sleep in the car, the last couple of hours at night and first 2-3 hours of the morning above the tree line you can find all families roosting on grasses, some roost alone others in small same species groups others in larger mixed species groups, usually in sheltered areas especially bottom of the bank along the side of mountain roads or small hollows, first thing in the morning you can quite easily spot any specimens that emerged overnight, they stand out like new coins, underside variation/ABBS are easy to spot.
I once found a roost of mainly fritillaries on the Petit Saint Bernard Pass just inside Italy that had High brown, Dark green, niobe, titanias, pearl bordered, mountain, spotted and cynthias in huge numbers along with loads of Erebia , mountain Pieridae and dotted around there was a couple of dozen Apollo.
Damaged and flight worn specimens are easily spotted without having to net them, box them and check them and then release them.

The image of the aberration of Adonis Blue [ L. Bellargus ] shown is this thread is apparently not ab obsoleta but the rarer ab krodeli [ Gillmer].

In the early to middle part of the 20th century, there was a well known craze for collecting aberrations of the British Blues. None more so than the varieties to be found in Lysandra coridon. There is the ' Monograph of the British Aberrations of the Chalkhill Blue' by P.M Bright and H. A Leeds published in 1939, a now scarce work. The wealthy Percy Bright was a cheque book collector who visited famous collecting localities such as Royston Heath in Hertfordshire and made the finder of a special coridon aberration, an offer he could not refuse.

Another interesting character of the aberration blue collecting craze was Robert ' Porker ' Watson, a tax accountant, who was quite an eccentric individual. As a young man he won prizes for wrestling at fairs and was later married five times. He built himself a house which he named Porcorum - ' of pigs '. Blind in one eye, he was probably one of the most successful British butterfly hunters of all time, securing many extreme aberrations especially regarding L. coridon. Watson made an incredible L. coridon collection of 20.800 specimens which will never be rivalled. The Watson Chalkhill Blue collection is housed in thirteen mahogany cabinets and is now in the collection of the British Museum of Natural History.


Plate from the 1939 Monograph by P.M. Bright and H.A. Leeds.


Plate from Aberrations of British Butterflies by A.D.A Russwurm [ 1978 ] showing some of Robert Watson's extreme L. coridon aberrations. Russwurm was also a great collector of British butterfly aberrations and all the 40 colour plates in his book showing 300 specimens were painted by himself.

Inspired by a very kind gift I received in the post today - an early Christmas present of an ab.semisyngrapha + arcuata - I've been a -browsing the interweb looking at photos of what some lucky people have come across in the field this year.

Apart from the usual suspects, there's a particularly striking L.coridon underside. Check this out:

www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/phpBB/gallery/images/upload/ccc272a5408279cee19a16c9b4c2cd07.jpg

Just when you think you've seen everything, these variable butterflies throw you a curveball! It'd be heart-in-mouth time if you found this...

Looks like the Polyommatus icarus that I found: insectnet.proboards.com/thread/4979/most-favorite-polyommatus-icarus

A collage of female of Lysandra bellargus with some blue beauties.