Boloria pales
In 3 days ~40% in a week ~70%
Boloria pales, the shepherd's fritillary, is a butterfly of the family Nymphalidae. It is found from the Cantabrian Mountains and the Pyrenees through the Alps and Apennine Mountains east to the Balkan, Carpathian Mountains, the Caucasus and central Asia up to western China.
The wingspan is 25–30 mm. The wing tops of the relatively narrow forewings, are usually orange-brown and are traversed by a fine, black pattern consisting of dots and lines as are the hindwings. Slightly darkened or strongly melanistic moths are less common. Characteristic is the strong rust-red underside of the hind wings, which is very strong in this species and is only interrupted by a few irregular yellowish markings.
A. pales. Varying above from fiery red-yellow to nearly black, the markings also being very variable, all intergradations occurring between specimens with only vestiges of black and such with the black markings so heavy and confluent that the ground-colour is suppressed. Recognized by the characteristic underside of
the hindwing, and especially by the shape of the hindwing, which has a nearly straight costal margin forming almost a right angle with the outer margin... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hohe Tauern National Park | 🇦🇹 Austria | |
| 2 | Mercantour National Park | 🇫🇷 France | |
| 3 | Vanoise National Park | 🇫🇷 France | |
| 4 | Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park | 🇪🇸 Spain | |
| 5 | Pyrénées National Park | 🇫🇷 France |
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Shepherd's Fritillary sighting in Mercantour National Park on a given day, based on 16 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 168th most-seen of the 412 insects we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 40%, and over a week to about 70%, if each day is a fresh chance.
July and August
In those months about 20% of wildlife watchers report a Shepherd's Fritillary in Mercantour National Park on a given day, against under 5% in October to May, the lowest months. Those are among Mercantour National Park's driest months, with about 55 mm of rain a month against 140 mm in October.
Between 1 and 4 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Shepherd's Fritillary sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
2nd of 5
Of the 5 parks where we can rate Shepherd's Fritillary sightings, Mercantour National Park ranks 2nd at about 10%. The best odds are in Hohe Tauern National Park (Austria, about 20%).
Same genus: Boloria
The closest relatives of the Shepherd's Fritillary that you can see in Mercantour National Park (genus Boloria, Lesser Fritillaries) are Titania's Fritillary (about 30%), Balkan Fritillary (about 20%) and Mountain Fritillary (about 10%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Shepherd's Fritillary is recorded against all the insects logged in Mercantour National Park (16 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
