Meeting Scarce Swallowtail

This post is about my brief encounter with Scarce Swallowtail.

The initial meeting happened while I was waiting for the bus. We didn’t talk as the butterfly was busy with the flower he was sitting on and dealing with the bumblebee who was pollinating the flower.

It was lovely anyway. I took the photos in this post. I have to be honest here. I have never seen such a big butterfly in my entire life let alone take a picture of it.

I wasn’t expecting it as it happened literaly 3 minutes way from my house in Prague the capital of Czech Republic.

The Scarce Swallowtail is a large butterfly; its wingspan ranges between 6.5 and 8.0 cm. Its black tiger stripes are on a wing background that varies from fairly bright yellow in the first brood to almost pure white in second brood butterflies. The undersides of the wings are coloured very similarly to the uppersides but with less black colouring near the wing margins. There is no distinctive difference in patterning between males and females.

Distribution

Other than as a vagrant flying across from central and southern Europe, this large and majestic butterfly is absent from Britain. Its common name reflects the rarity of it being seen in Britain, where early lepidopterists named it. Certainly in France and many other parts of mainland Europe it is a more common sight than the Swallowtail, Papilio machaon, which is sometimes referred to as the Common Swallowtail.

With climate change this once rare visitor to Britain may eventually be seen rather more often, but at present it is still unusual to see a Scarce Swallowtail anywhere except for the occasional migrant in the south-east of England. Scarce Swallowtails are a very common sight on mainland Europe and the Far East.

Lifecycle

The larval foodplants are various Prunus species and include Almond, Cherry, Blackthorn and Hawthorn.

In the northern half of its range the Scarce Swallowtail produces just one brood between May and July, while further south there are two or even three broods between May and August; the Scarce Swallowtail can be seen on the wing until late September or early October, depending on location.

Dark brown when very young, the caterpillars soon turn bright green and develop fine yellow dorsal and side stripes.

This species overwinters in its pupal stage inside a buff-brown chrysalis; however, where an earlier summer brood occurs the chrysalises are green (and hence well camouflaged against a background of foliage).