A tit, a tattered map, and a warbler…

Anne and I had a nice leisurely bike ride down to Brielle, just south of the Maas River, and back. So, now I’m trying to identify some of the other creatures I photographed Saturday morning.

First up is the darling long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus). Its beak barely extends beyond its feathers, and it’s tiny “(only 13–15 cm (5–6 in) in length, including its 7–9 cm (3–3.5 in) tail)”,

Here’s one with more black on its face.

This next one led me on quite the wild-goose chase. I initially thought it was a white admiral (Limenitis camilla), and if you follow the link, I think you’ll see why.

There were a few about, which seems to be how it goes here, and here’s a close-up of another one who appears to be slightly worse for the wear.

The underside (ventral) is all wrong however, and once I saw that, I also saw that the wing shape isn’t quite right either.

And that, boys and girls, is because these aren’t white admirals at all, of course. Instead, they are “map” butterflies (Araschnia levana), and that appears to be their complete and only name. The Pedia of Wik helpfully explains some of my difficulty in identifying them with “the map is unusual in that its two annual broods look very different. The summer brood are black with white markings, looking like a miniature version of the white admiral and lacking most of the orange of the pictured spring brood.”

Here’s a close-up of that gorgeous “map”.

Finally, this little yellow-bellied stinker had been teasing me for a while, and I ended up taking a couple dozen pictures in hopes that just one would turn out. Well, here it is.

I had even written it up for you as a “mystery bird”, but as I tried to explain that it looked like a yellow chiffchaff, I came across the willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus), whom the folks at ebird describe as “looks very much like a chiffchaff, [but] is often brighter, more yellowish (especially in autumn) with stronger pale eyebrow, pinkish legs,” and with a completely different song. That’s our new bird to a “t”!