Frigga´s Fritillary

16:th of June 2009
Finding Frigga´s Fritillary in the county of Västmanland haven´t been easy. It´s a northern butterfly on it´s southern frontier down here. When we finally made it to the site last year, it was too late in the season, on last week´s excursion the weather was drab. Hopes have been down to nill on this one. Today the weather was almost perfect and plenty of Butterflies were flying, but it still took us a couple of hours and sheer luck to locate one (!) individual. An obviously bigger and less bright orange Fritillary than the more common cousins Bog– and Pearl-bordered Fritillary that both fly in good numbers on the same site. As you can see it´s in perfect condition and so fresh and still that it appeared just newly hatched. Here it sits on a leaf of the hostplant; cloudberry!