October 2009 Sightings

[Neil Hulme]

Hi Steve/Guy,
Trust your ID skills Steve. Brown Argus has gone to third brood this year - and quite widespread in doing so. I've seen third brood BA on 6 or 7 sites in Sussex and Surrey.
Neil

[roundwood123]

Thanks for that Neil, maybe it was a Brown Argus then... Steve

[Ian Pratt]

Yesterday I went out to try to find the clouded yellows my wife had seen the previous day. I came back to the house with a clouded yellow sitting on my macro lens! I put it on a fuchsia to roost overnight and took some close ups. It flew off this morning when it had warmed up! Lovely butterfly.

[Ian Pratt]

Still a number of fresh painted ladies on the Isle of Wight too!

[Ian Pratt]

a sight I never thought I would EVER see in the UK.
Neil

What with large tortoiseshell in March on the Isle of Wight and then mating Queens of Spain in Sussex in October! What a great year.

[Gruditch]

Plus an extraordinary amount of aberrations, and all this in the best Painted Lady year ever, a great year.

Regards Gruditch

[Piers]

What with large tortoiseshell in March on the Isle of Wight and then mating Queens of Spain in Sussex in October! What a great year.

Hi Ian,

Were there any further reports of LT's from the same locality on the Island in July this year? I recall we were all speculating about the possibility of them breeding in the area...

Cheers.
Felix.

[Ian Pratt]

What with large tortoiseshell in March on the Isle of Wight and then mating Queens of Spain in Sussex in October! What a great year.

Hi Ian,

Were there any further reports of LT's from the same locality on the Island in July this year? I recall we were all speculating about the possibility of them breeding in the area...

Cheers.
Felix.

Sadly not. I did look!
Ian

[Denise]

As the weather has been pretty naf, and butterflies have all but dried up, I, like Dave Mc have taken to moths for my lepidoptera fix.
A couple from last night.

Feathered Thorn

Merveille du Jour

Stunning moths I think.
Denise

[Charles Nicol]

that's a lovely Merveille du Jour Denise

charles

[Dave McCormick]

Lovley Merveille du Jour. Never seen one myself, but this time of year you can find interesting moths, even if there are less of them around than warmer times of the year.

[Lee Hurrell]

They are stunning moths, the Merveille du Jour aren't they?

I've only ever seen one, years ago now, at a light on Sevenoaks Library but I remember it took my breath away at the time.

Cheers

Lee

[Deano]

Deano,

It was a an absolutely mind-boggling sight to see so many Clouded Yellow concentrated in one place. Even though it meant a 100 mile round trip, I made 3 visits in the space of a week because you never know when this spectacle may ever be repeated. As this is clearly a breeding site, I have not given up hope of seeing more later in the year. I am hopeful that a visit on a sunny day in late November may produce some more sightings.

I am attaching another of the photos which was taken on 1st October of a beautiful f.helice. Now that the weather has changed, I think we all need a bit of cheering up at the moment.

IMG_1026G.jpg

Cheers,

Vince

Hi Vince
Many thanks for your great report, cheering indeed! Sorry that it took me so long to see it, but it was great news, and a lovely photo to boot!

Best wishes,

Deano.

[Lynn]

Painted Ladies

A Small patch of flowering ivy had 12 PLs on it on the 12th October and 14 on the 14th. These sightings were at Butterfly Conservation's Magdalen Hill Down Reserve at Winchester Hampshire. O that they would start spending the winter with us as the Red admiral started doing a few years back!

[Padfield]

Red admirals are hibernators by nature. Painted ladies are not - they are continuously brooded without any true diapause, in Europe/Africa at least (I don't know about America). So I believe it would take more than a few unseasonably mild winters to persuade them to become residents here.

Guy

[Dave McCormick]

Red admirals are hibernators by nature. Painted ladies are not - they are continuously brooded without any true diapause, in Europe/Africa at least (I don't know about America). So I believe it would take more than a few unseasonably mild winters to persuade them to become residents here.

Guy

Painted Ladies will actually hibernate, but only in places that have mild winters, but this is in USA (I don't know about other places), others migrate down to the South of the USA there where it is warmer and they can breed again

[NickB]

Well just a single Red Admiral patrolling in my local cemetery today and yesterday. No sign of Painted Ladies; I assume that they have moved South.....(or if they do hibernate, that they have already tucked themselves away, like most of the Comma seem to have done)
N

[Padfield]

I won't push the point, because all my information is second hand, and knowledge of butterflies advances all the time! So I might be very wrong. But my books all indicate that in both Europe and America the painted lady (V. cardui, not V. virginiensis, the American painted lady) cannot hibernate in any stage and thus cannot survive the winter north of a certain latitude. It survives further south not by hibernating but just by keeping flying throughout the winter. My American guide states: 'Most of North America is devoid of Painted Ladies between the first heavy frosts and the onset of spring, although they occur year-round in the Sonoran deserts and perhaps other warm regions'.

If you look at a map of the world, you see that the whole of the USA (apart from Alaska) is south of Cornwall and the southern states are the latitude of North Africa!

Guy

[NickB]

Thanks Guy
Like you, I tend to agree with current wisdom; so until we are presented with evidence otherwise I think we should accept that we are unlikely to get over-wintering Painted Ladies, nice though that would be!
An event like this year does put these theories to the test however, so it will be interesting to see if there is a big spike in early Spring next year. If the butterflies don't survive, any possibility of their eggs/larvae/pupae surviving, I wonder?

[Zonda]

Makes you think about global warming. Things are changing,,,,that's for sure,