Oeneis norna (Thunberg, 1791) - Norse Grayling.
Oeneis is a large genus inhabiting mostly polar and mountain
tundras, alpine meadows and screes, forest-tundras, some species
inhabit taiga or peat-moss bogs, only few of them penetrate into
the steppes. There are an immense number of hardly differing
taxa of a problematic rank and range. Some of them seem to be
parthenogenetic, that can partly explain ambiquity of species
limits in these very cases. The males of Oeneis exhibit the most
expressed territorial behaviour among Satyrids and have a very
swift and impetous flight. They occupy any noticeable objects
disturbing their even habitats.
Range: Fennoscandia, Polar Ural, tundras and the mountains of Siberia and the
Far East, NE China, N Korea, Hokkaido.
Ssp altaica Elwes, 1899, range: the mountains of S Siberia.
An alpine meadow patch neighbouring with the most elevated larch wood outposts in
the Kamdyt valley, a Tekelyu River right tributary which in turn is an Akkem River right
tributary, the Katunskii Range northern principal slope, Central [Russian} Altai Mts.,
Ust'-Koksa District, Altai Rapublic, West Siberia, Russia. 4rd July 2007. O. Kosterin.