Comma No95 Autumn 2016

Cranberry Blue (John Maddocks)
In the pine forests (Stephen Lewis)
Babochki in Belarus
In June this year a group from the West Midlands and
further beyond led by Mike Williams, Branch Committee
member, spent eight days in Belarus with Gabor Orban of
Ecotours, his wife Andrea and a Belarusian entomologist
from the Science Academy in Minsk, Anatoli Kulak, who
spoke almost no English.
Yellow-legged Tortoiseshell
(John Maddocks)
False Ringlet (Stephen Lewis)
Full information about the butterfly
fauna of Belarus is lacking,
so one of the main aims of the trip
was to provide records, especially
of less common species according
to the European Red List of Butterflies,
and also to raise awareness
of the conservation of butterflies
in Belarus.
Three very different areas of
the country were visited, the first
of which was part of Europe’s
last area of primeval forest,
Bialowieza, which straggles the
Polish border, where hunting still
prevails. Sadly the weather was
not kind when we were there, but
the forest had a very natural and
untouched feel to it, and we did
manage to see a herd of Bison,
Europe’s heaviest land mammal, a
pair of Collared Flycatchers, and
Anatoli found a very rare beetle
under the bark of a fallen tree.
Wetland
The sun shone for the next few
days and butterflying began in
earnest. We drove to another
National Park, Prypiatski in the
south east of the country. Before
we got there, a lunchtime stop in
a meadow full of butterflies turned
up three Coppers – Scarce,
Sooty and Purple-shot – as well
as Hungarian Glider and the
18
the Comma