Twin-spot Fritillary (brenthis hecate)
2008 photos highlighted green. Click on any photo to go to an enlarged picture, or simply scroll down the page.
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| 1480_male_Var_3Jun06 | 10571_male_Var_18May08 | 10877_female_Var_26May08 |
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| 10833_pair_Var_26May08 |
This butterfly of the far south of France is quite uncommon and could easily be confused with the Lesser Marbled Fritillary (B. ino) based on the upperside alone. The male hecate is a clear bright orange and the female more heavily suffused grey, dulling the orange. Hecate has series of quite round post-discal spots on both upperside wings, as well as a series of submarginal spots which are shown in T&L as being essentially round on the uph, and a continuous black margin. Ino is very similar and is usually depicted as having a series of somewhat indistinct non-round submarginal marks. This originally had me fooled, as the submarginal marks of 1480 look non-round and more like ino than hecate according to T&L. But: hecate has a complete series of post-discal spots on both the upf and uph of similar size, and ino has no (or very small) spot in the upf s4 and a significantly smaller spot in the uph s4 (see illustrations below). Curiously I can't seem to find any mention of this in the books. The underside is quite distinctive, though. The two series of unh black spots are characteristic of hecate and give it its name.
I originally saw one hecate in 2000 and had to wait another six years before discovering three sites in Var (actually I was told about one). However, its flight period seems to be from the end of May to mid-June, so I was unlikely to have seen it in Var as most of my pre-2006 trips were in July.
hecate ino
1480: a male. Hard to get a good photo as the males seemed to be continuously on the move. Altitude 230m.
10571: a male underside of one that did stop for a moment.
10877: this is the female from the mating pair in 10833. The weather was dull and the pair remained as in 10833 for some time, but then the sun came out briefly and the female opened up, still connected to the male although this is not obvious and needs a close look at the photo to confirm that the foreground obstruction is, in fact, the male.
10833: the mating pair, female on the right, posing nicely in dull weather. The foothold of the male seems tenuous to say the least.
