Swallowtail Closeup

Closeup Of Old World Swallowtail (Papilio Machaon), 04-2023, Ticino, Switzerland

 

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THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO:

When I was a little boy, the butterfly in the photo above was an almost mythical creature to me. It was so rare, that I seem to remember most people I knew excitedly shouting "A SWALLOWTAIL! A SWALLOWTAIL" if they happened to spot one, and we kids would come running for a chance to see this unicorn of the insect world with our own eyes.

 

Granted, for 5-year old me "most people I knew" probably consisted of my parents and siblings plus a few kids and the kindergarten teacher, but what is certainly true is that unlike with more common butterflies, a visit from this elusive beauty would not go unnoticed and rarely unmentioned. The swallowtail was important - I knew that much.

 

A couple of years later, when I was maybe six or seven years old, I learned that the swallowtail belonged to the family of the „Ritterfalter“ (that is the German name for the Papilionidae) which translates to „knight butterflies“. Now this new knowledge really fueled my imagination: so the swallowtail was a knight!

 

There were only three butterfly species present in Switzerland that had been granted a knighthood - the other two being Sir Scarce Swallowtail and Sir Apollo - and since the (old world) swallowtail was the most beautiful, it was certainly the most valiant and probably sat at the head of the knights’ table; heck, in my mind it was practically the Sir Lancelot of the butterfly world!

 

Now you might chuckle at the notion that this insect - which may seem like "just another butterfly" to people who live in countries with a large and colorful insect fauna - made this much of an impression on me. But such exotic looking creatures (ANY exotic looking animals) were practically non-existent where I lived.

 

I grew up in a very rural area of Switzerland outside the city of Zurich during the late seventies and eighties, and although things would get worse in the 90s (before they got better in the 2000s with the boom of organic farming), intense agriculture had already taken a terrible toll on the biodiversity of the open grass land around our little village.

 

Most crucially for the swallowtail, the once abundant wild carrot - which is the plant the caterpillars of Papilio machaon most commonly feed on in northern Switzerland - had nearly disappeared from our fields and meadows, so the species relied on fennel and carrot plants in private vegetable gardens for its survival. Sadly, those were few and far between, and by the time I grew up, the swallowtail had gone all but extinct in our area.

 

My desperate attempts to help it out and lure it into our garden (well, mom did all the work by planting carrot seeds at my insistence) remained futile; regardless how meticulously I searched every plant, to my great disappointment I never found a single caterpillar nor even so much as a tiny swallowtail egg.

 

But there was one place where I could rely on encountering this rarest and most gorgeous of butterflies - and also many other fantastical creatures that were the stuff of legend for the little nature nerd I was (well, I guess still am 😊 ). This was a magical place that lay on the other side of a gigantic mountain, and it could only be accessed through a dark tunnel that would go on for miles and miles and miles (ten, to be exact).

 

One could enter in winter and come out in spring; on one side there might be snow several feet high while on the other side warm sunshine would illuminate lush green fields that, after a further 30-minutes drive in the family car, would give way to gardens with palm trees.

 

This was a fantasy land from a fairy tale, where people grew peaches and lemons and figs in their gardens, giant beetles grew antlers like stags, snakes grew to a length of six feet, and colorful lizards basked on the walls of peculiar and ancient looking little stone houses, while exotic seeming insects and spiders (and even scorpions) populated the fields and forests.

 

This place (as you might have guessed) wasn't Hogwarts: it was Ticino, the Italian speaking southern part of Switzerland. And since it lay on the other side of the Alps, we would usually drive through the 10-mile (16.9 kilometers) Gotthard road tunnel to get there, and it was indeed quite common that there would still be snow covering the north entry in early March, while on the southern end of the tunnel spring had already arrived.

 

I knew that this land of seemingly endless sunshine was where my grandparents had grown up, but to little-boy me it might as well have been Hogwarts (although the Harry Potter books obviously hadn't yet been written back then 😉 ). Driving to Ticino through this endless appearing tunnel was nothing short of a trip to another world.

 

What further added to the magic was that our vacation home was a several-hundred year old "rustico" (that's what the ancient, traditionally built stone houses are called in Ticino) that was located like some long forgotten stronghold in the midst of a wild, jungle-like forest in a remote area of the Verzasca valley. The place - which belonged to my uncle (who never went there) - was completely off-grid and had its own power supply from solar panels on the roof and fresh water from a nearby spring.

 

With no neighbors around that we could bother - and armed with a deep trust in fate (which was kinda typical for the "baby-boomer" generation) that we kids would neither fall from a cliff, drown in the river, get bitten by a venomous snake, get lost in the woods, NOR go feral and start a savage little Lord-Of-The-Flies style cult - our parents let us roam free.

 

To me this meant I went exploring the untamed nature around me for as long as there was daylight. I wanted to know and see every creature that lived in the area; it was like going on a gemstone hunt. And the bounty would always be plentiful: there were snakes and lizards and stag beetles and mantises and giant caterpillars of hawk moths to be found, but the big price - the crown jewel if you will - was the swallowtail.

 

For here the "winged knight" still ruled supreme, and even though it didn't exist in large numbers, I would always find at least one a day on some little meadow in the forest. Because swallowtails are so much bigger than the more common butterflies, I could easily spot it from afar, and just like the one in the photo above (taken in my garden in Ticino this past spring), I would usually find Sir Papilio Machaon sipping nectar from the flowers of red clover.

 

These swallowtail hunts in the wild Verzasca valley were marvelous adventures (though in hindsight they were probably more than just a little dangerous), and to this day they're among my favorite childhood memories.

 

A lot has changed in the nearly forty years that have since gone by; parents who let their kids roam free all day long in untamed forests are certainly a thing of the past in Switzerland (my own generation seems to have a hard time letting their kids go ANYwhere unsupervised - except perhaps for the internet 😉 ). But what has remained the same is my fascination with these gorgeous insects.

 

And there's some good news: I'm happy to report that the swallowtail has bounced back a little in many parts of northern Switzerland. It's still one of the rarest butterflies, but nowadays I consistently find the cute, characteristically striped caterpillars on the carrot plants in my parents' vegetable garden year after year, and every once in a while I'm even greeted by a "winged knight" in person when I take a stroll across the fields and meadows of my youth.

 

As for Ticino; well, I now have my own little house there (also a "rustico", but in the less remote Malcantone region) with a tiny garden attached, and every year I make sure to do everything in my power to accommodate Sir (or Dame) Swallowtail on my premises (also read: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/post/how-to-attract-a-swallowta... - and with great success I might add :-)

 

During the warmer months, this gorgeous Papilionidae species regales me with its knightly presence nearly every day, and I still make a run for my camera each time I get a visit - even though Sir Lancelot of the butterfly world is a nightmare to photograph.

 

Knighthood or not, this is one nervous fella that constantly jumps and flutters around on the flowers he likes to visit, which tends to drive a certain (now fully grown) nature nerd and wannabe-photographer to the brink of insanity on a regular basis.

 

Thankfully though, by now my neighbors are used to the (embarrassingly frequent) frustrated shouts and bouts of swearing coming from my garden (I imagine them just rolling their eyes and saying: "Great, there's a butterfly in his garden again..." 😂 ).

 

And with this (as always far too lengthy) anecdote I'll leave you for now and say goodbye to 2023:

 

😊❤🎉💕 - HAPPY NEW YEAR my friends!!! - 😊❤🎉💕

 

All the best - and the best of light - to you in 2024 and beyond! And as always: let me know what you think in the comments (even though it will take me a while to respond, but I promise I will). 🙏 😊 ❤

 

 

Done