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Field Notes

High Atlas mountains, Morocco, March 2001

High Atlas mountains, Morocco, March 2001

Same butterfly as above - clearly a female with orange uppersides.

High Atlas mountains, Morocco, March 2001

Peter Rowlings

High Atlas mountains, Morocco, March 2001

High Atlas mountains, Morocco, March 2001

A widespread species in Morocco, and elsewhere in north Africa. It only flies extremely early in the year, to find these in March 2001 we had to get up above 1000m altitude. We found several colonies dotted about the mountains. 

The colony at which most of these photographs were taken were at about 1200m in the High Atlas mountains near Taroudante. We saw something with a clearly orange upperside fly across the road - see photo above for what it looked like. We strongly suspected this species so knowing they "hill-top" So I walked up the small round hill beside us. Sure enough males had congregated at the top and were sunning themselves and patrolling. Females were just below the top although there weren't many of these. It is the female with the orange upperside.

It is a very variable species although these individuals don't look especially so. There were some butterflies that had large differences in underside hindwing band but I've no decent photos of these.

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