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Agriades(pyrenaicus)dardanus

Gavarnie (Balkan) Blue

Field Notes

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Broad black borders in the male are characteristic of this species/ sub-species

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Underside of male above

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Female

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Male taking salts from the fabric of the fabric of my trouser leg

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Female underside, much browner than the male.

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

An extremely local butterfly but not uncommon.

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Another favoured nectar plant, second only to Thyme

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

Pirin Mts, Bulgaria, July 2004

This was a huge find in Bulgaria. It is not at all well known from this country so it was extremely satisfying to discover a thriving colony. We probably saw 30 or 40 individuals in the very tiny area they were flying over. This was a small rocky ridge with a great variety of plants and sparse grasses at roughly 1900m. It was my Dad who found them - I had spend an hour wandering fruitlessly across similar looking areas nearby without finding a single specimen.

It is a very small and inconspicuous butterfly. It flies low over the ground stopping frequently on rocks or to take nectar from low plants. These plants were most often Thyme (Thymus) but also a large pale pink daisy (family Asteraceae) both of which are shown in the photos above.

It is extremely local in the Balkans from N Greece, Macedonia, and former Yugoslavia. It is not entirely clear if dardanus is a distinct species from pyrenaicus but current thinking is that it probably deserves full species status. I have limited experience of the Gavarnie Blue, A. pyrenaicus from the Pyrenees and that butterfly had much less prominent borders on the upperside of the male and its habit was entirely different. Those butterflies (all 5 of them) were flying very fast up and down a very steep grassy slope that culminated in a high rocky cliff that towered above. The fact we found them at all indicates they move quite extensively from their breeding ground, unlike our experience in Bulgaria.

Additional support for speciation, although by no means conclusive, is the geographical distribution of dardanus compared with pyrenaicus. The former is found very locally in a few small regions of the southern Balkans, the latter is found in a few small regions of the Pyrenees and another possible species asturiensis in N. Spain which I've not seen.

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