Val d'Aran



Val d'Aran, July 2008

The first picture was taken a long time ago with a Kodak digital camera, high up in the Spanish Pyrenees and the second much more recently with a Canon digital camera. The others are video frames from another locality in the same region.

The Spanish Brassy Ringlet looks in flight just like other brassy ringlets but is actually easy to identify when it rests. There is a single ocellus in the corner of the forewing containing two pupils and the orange markings are well developed. Compare this with the Common Brassy Ringlet, which has two ocelli very close together and more restricted orange.

Spanish Brassy Ringlet are restricted to Spain, France and Andorra, occuring in the Sierra Nevada and in the Pyrenees in Spain and just in the Pyrenees in France and Andorra (obviously!). The Pyrenean form (which all these pictures show) is sometimes treated as a separate species , Erebia rondui.