Lasiommata megera

Wall (Lasiommata megera)

2024 photographs highlighted in yellow. Click on any photograph to go to an enlarged picture, or simply scroll down the page.


10376_male_Alpes-Maritimes_9May08	46601_male_Alpes-Maritimes_16Jul19	32006_female_Var_3May13	34402_female_Var_28Sep13

7077_female_Var_16Jun07	50662_female_Cher_18May23	51995_male_Var_6Sep23	6678_male_Alpes-Maritimes_8Jun07

48878_male_Var_5Sep21	49501_female_Alpes-Maritimes_1Jul22

Megera is sometimes referred to as the Wall Brown or even the Wall Butterfly. Megera is superficially quite similar to the Large Wall (L. maera), although there are significant differences on close inspection, and these are addressed on the maera page. Megera is declining alarmingly in the UK but still reasonably common in southern France, although maera sometimes seems commoner, especially at medium and high altitudes.

Megera emerges very early in the season and again in October when it seems to be quite common, in places very common, in Var. It is a difficult butterfly to photograph, I find, as it settles and opens it wings briefly two or three times, then closes them permanently.

The illustrations of megera in T&L show the female to be very similar to the male, with heavier dark brown bands breaking up the orange as in 10376. This originally led me to believe that 7077 was maera of the subspecies adrasta as they were much closer to the T&L illustrations of adrasta than to the female megera.

On checking H&R and the Lafranchis ID book, the illustrations of female megera there are much closer to 7077, so I am left to consider that the T&L illustration is potentially quite misleading. There is another member of the Lasiommata genus found in France, the so-called Northern Wall Brown (L. petropolitana) which is very similar to the nominate form of maera, and almost impossible to confuse with megera.

ref	sex	observations	alt. m
10376	M	a typical male.	1000
46601	M	a male, quite dark and boldly marked. It seems that opportunities to photograph the male upperside are notably less frequent than for the female.	1000
32006	F	a female, rather orange, although perhaps not quite to the extent of 7077.	185
34402	F	a female, very crisply marked, and rather fresh even at the late date.	30
7077	F	a female. It is exceptionally orange and looks nothing like the illustration in T&L.	220
50662	F	a female, very extensive orange, and very visually appealing.	170
51995	M	a male underside, a poor photograph but it does illustrate the dark and strongly crescented unh submarginal marks.	780
6678	M	a male: the underside carries several suggestions of maera, notably the number of rings in each ocellus, the general light colouring, and the large unf ocellus, but the consistency of the size of the unh ocelli is a sure pointer to megera, as noted on the maera page.	330
48878	M	*a male underside. Opportunities for megera* undersides don't seem to present themselves very often, and when they do it is usually on the ground and difficult to photograph.**	20
49501	F	a female underside, very well camouflaged in the long grass. I originally had 49501 on the maera page, but I had not given enough attention to the ocelli clue (see maera page) and had just assumed it was maera because they were flying at that location. I subsequently learnt of the clue relating to the submarginal band (also see maera page), which surely confirmed (if confirmation was needed) that 49501 is megera. Thanks to Pete Smith for spotting this error.	1000