Spanish Gatekeeper

Pyronia bathseba


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Pyronia bathseba

Aragón, Spain, July 2017

Pyronia bathseba

Female, Aragón, Spain, July 2017

Pyronia bathseba

Male, Málaga, April 2019

Pyronia bathseba

Male, Málaga, April 2019

Pyronia bathseba

Aragón, Spain, July 2017

Pyronia bathseba

Female, Aragón, Spain, July 2017



Male, Aragón, Spain, July 2011

Pyronia bathseba

Aragón, Spain, July 2017



Female, Aragón, Spain, July 2011

Pyronia bathseba

Málaga, April 2019



Female, Aragón, Spain, July 2011



Female, Aragón, Spain, July 2011

Pyronia bathseba distribution

Distribution

This is the earliest of the three European gatekeeper species, flying in a single generation from April to July in sunny, grassy places, hillsides and light woodland. It is locally common throughout Iberia and in the South of France, often flying with its two cogeners, the gatekeeper and the southern gatekeeper. I have found it in long grass and alongside wooded rivers in Aragón, as well as relatively bare hill tracks in Málaga. I first encountered it, though, when I lived in Gibraltar in 1983, where it is a common resident up the rock.

Of the three, this is the most distinctive. The male sex brand encloses an entirely dark basal half to the forewing, unlike those of the gatekeeper and southern gatekeeper, which project into the orange ground colour. The hindwing upperside of both sexes sports a series of white-pupilled, postdiscal ocelli - absent from the other species. The underside is dark with an angled, cream band dividing the basal region from the postdiscal region and there is a complete series of orange-ringed, white-pupilled black spots just outside this band. Altogether, it is an unmistakable package.

The caterpillars, which hibernate, feed on false brome grass.