Whilst birdwatching at the village at the
bottom of the Raydah Escaprment I found a number of Fritillary butterflys. I
had no idea what species they were but checked in the butterfly book to Arabia
and found they were Desert Fritillary Melitaea deserticola. This is a truly
desert species, found only in the hottest driest places of North Africa
(Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Egypt), Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and
Yemen. It closely resembles the spotted fritillary M. didyma but has more
orange and with reduced upperside black markings. The antennae are orange beneath
extending from the club to at least a third the way down the shaft, compared to
black with just an orange tip in didyma and the underside of the abdomen is
orange, compared to white. They fly from March into the summer depending on
seasonal conditions where they like very hot dry rocky slopes and gullies with
sparse vegetation. The Desert Fritillary is a butterfly of the Nymphalidae
family with the subspecies found in southwest Saudi Arabia being Melitaea
deserticola macromaculata (Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan & western Saudi
Arabia).
