And that’s #70!

Breaking news: yesterday I recorded my 70th butterfly species in The Netherlands. To put that in perspective for my non-Dutch readership: the person at the top of the ranking recorded 74 species.

The Chalk Hill Blue (Lysanda coridon) disappeared from The Netherlands in 1959. Occasionally some errant specimens were seen, but in recent years the pace picked up: it was sighted in 2018, 2019 and 2020 consecutively but not in 2021.

Two days ago the Chalk Hill Blue was sighted near Heerlen in the south of The Netherlands, close to the border with Germany. It had settled for the night and it would rain a little, so I was pretty certain it would still be there the next morning. So what does a enthousiastic butterfly photographer with an empty weekend agenda do? Indeed, he sets his alarmclock to 4 am, jumps out of bed, races to the garage and fires up the engine for the two-hour drive down south.

Upon arrival, I stepped out of the car to see two other gentlemen with cameras step out of theirs as well. We moved into the local park and were quickly joined by a fourth man. Apparently I had not taken a very good look a the map, so first we searched at the wrong spot. When I noticed my mistake I moved over to the right spot, where a fifth photographer showed up a little while later. Even with the five of us and a decent idea about the exact spot, it still took us a lot of time to locate the butterfly as it was low to the ground. Eventually I was the first to spot it much to the joy of the my fellow four friends.

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM   f/4   1/800   ISO 100

It was only 07:26 in the morning, it was a little bit foggy and the sun just skimmed over the treeline. In my viewfinder I saw one of the nation’s rarest butterflies covered in dew and sunlight. What a spectacle!

Crop from the same photo. Look at all those dew drops!

Happily our small group took turns photograping the butterfly while we got acquainted. Thank you Noor, Arnoud, Eus and Jo for the wonderful company.

News of our re-discovery spread like wildfire and new butterfly photographers started to arrive in droves. As I do like some solitude in the weekend, I said goodbye and returned to my car to drive to the forest that I had originally intended to go to. With a big smile of my face of course.

Birds….and finally butterflies

Having visited Hungary and Greece in the past two years, my friend and I had a vague plan for the south of Spain this year. That plan was dropped for a number of reasons. A few days ago, we joined forces for a daytrip to NP De Hoge Veluwe instead.

De Hoge Veluwe is a large national park smack in the middle of The Netherlands. Its main habitats are dry and wet heath, sand dunes and forests with many pines and oaks. My friend hoped to see the rare Alcon Blue (Phengaris alcon) and the Purple Hairstreak (Favonius quercus). I just hoped to add some Dutch species to my 2022 collection as I had been away in Sweden for two months.

However, arriving at the right spot for the Alcon Blue, nothing moved. After a while we gave up. The first interesting animal that we spotted was a bird actually, the rare Snake Eagle. This was followed by another lifer for me, Montagu’s Harrier. We also saw five Ravens and a couple of smaller birds. It started to look like our trip would be more productive in terms of birds than butterflies.

My friend taking aim at the hovering Snake Eagle (Iphone)

Then our fortunes turned for the better: first a rather rare Small Skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris). All we managed was a record shot of the yellow underside of the antenna club before the strong wind blew the butterfly away. The sandy path provided a home to a couple of Grayling (Hipparchia semele).

A few kilometers further south the party started for real. Our first major find was this quite fresh Heath Fritillary (Melitaea athalia). Due to the strong winds, I could see it moving from left to right and back in my viewfinder. There is just one way to go at it in such circumstances: put the camera in high-speed mode and “spray and pray”.

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM   f/4   1/800   ISO 100

We cycled further in search of the Dark Green Fritillary (Speyeria aglaja) but did not see one. Then I spotted this Sooty Copper (Lycaena tityrus) all alone on top of a isolated flower. I thought it might make for a nice background and it did:

Canon RF 100-500 f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM   f/7.1   1/640   ISO 400

By then it was already late in the afternoon. We had been pushing our bicycles through the sandy tracks on foot more than we actually cycled, the temperature was a good 28 degrees and strong winds dehydrated us even more. We were running out of water and decided to call it a day. But the butterflies had one last and very welcome surprise in store.

Cycling towards the exit I saw something small and light grey fly over my head. I yelled “Purple Hairstreak” to my friend and jammed on the brakes. And unbelievably, the fluttering thing was a Purple Hairstreak. It mysteriously fell out of the tree in front of us into the grass and settled there. It could not be bothered at all by our presence, so we had ample opportunity to remove some twigs for a nicer composition and take all the pictures that we wanted. As it was in the shade, I opted to use some flash.

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM   f/6.3   1/250   ISO 320

So despite missing the Alcon Blue, we were very satisfied with the results, especially the Purple Hairstreak in mint condition. We said goodbye at the parking lot and went home towards our wives, lots of water and icecreams.

Plenty of Green Hairstreaks

There is one particular butterfly species that was constantly present during my stay in Sweden: the Green Hairstreak (Callophrys rubi). Never before in over a decade of butterfly photography have I seen so many Green Hairstreaks insuch a short time.

While strolling alongside one of the many lakes in Sweden I befriended this little fellow. Despite gusts of wind I got this nice result against a black background. Pretty pleased with the result!

Canon RF 100-500 f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM   f/8   1/500   ISO 320

The sharp observer may have noticed in the EXIF that my trusted Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM is no longer with me. I sold it a few months ago, despite being very fond of it for its sharpness, reliability and incredibly fast autofocus. Actually it was the Canon 7D Mark II that was in for a change and not so much the lens. I noticed very considerable noise in the high ISO’s in the rainforests in Ecuador and wanted to benefit from the improved noise performance of the newest generation of cameras. And that meant switching to mirrorless, in my case a Canon R6. To complete the combo I selected a Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1L IS USM.

I fell in love with the new lens very quickly. It performs absolutely amazing: razorsharp, lightweight, very well built and you get to zoom as a bonus feature. It also sports a very short Minimum Focus Distance (MFD) which comes in handy with butterfly photography. This is where it really outperforms my old EF 300mm.

The R6 on the other hand took me a long time to get accustomed to: the camera needs quite some time to “wake up” when you push a button and for the viewfinder to show an image: I already missed a couple of shots that I would not have missed with the old combo. Also, the electronic viewfinder’s resolution does not come near what the human eye can see through a DSLR’s viewfinder, so sometimes I struggle to actually see my subject. Despite these drawbacks, I also took some amazing shots that I would never have taken otherwise because of the worldclass eye tracking. The camera can find a subject in an instant and stays glued to it, no matter what. So as with all gear, it has its pros and cons and you just have to learn to live with the cons while making the most of the pros.

The R6 is a fullframe camera capable of very shallow depth of field, certainly when combined with the tele zoomed out to 500mm at the MFD. Look at this stunningly small depth of field which yields a very nice blurry background even at f/8.

Canon RF 100-500 f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM   f/8   1/640   ISO 640

Here’s the same butterfly at the same spot, but now taken with my 100mm macro. As I was able to crawl very close, the level of detail on the butterfly has increased and you can actually see the individual scales on the wing (at least I can with the full-size photo). Such is the power of this superb macro lens. On the other hand, the butterfly is not as isolated from its environment as on the photo above. Never would have guessed that the tele would actually produce even blurrier images than my macro!

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM   f/5   1/640   ISO 100

Now, this nicely shows what two different lenses can do with the same subject and what creative possibilities this brings to the butterfly photographer!

After almost seven weeks in Sweden I have now returned to The Netherlands and hope to make the most of the Dutch butterfly season. Hopefully I can get back to you soon with more stories to tell.