Yesterday's sun brought unexpected - and very welcome - visitors to the garden: several Painted Ladies, newly arrived no doubt from North Africa, nectaring hungrily on Ceanothus in the back garden and a white-flowered evergreen whose name I can never retain in the front. At one point two of them started a fight and flew off at high speed in chase of each other - they are extremely strong fliers; they have to be to make their great migration. The Painted Lady is (as the name suggests) a showily marked and easily recognised species, and most summers, if you keep your eyes peeled, you'll probably spot a few. But some years they reach these shores in great waves and can turn up anywhere - I once saw one battling gamely with gusty winds right under Hadrian's Wall. Tomorrow's early sightings give me hope that this might be a 'Painted Lady summer'...
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
A Painted Lady Summer?
Yesterday's sun brought unexpected - and very welcome - visitors to the garden: several Painted Ladies, newly arrived no doubt from North Africa, nectaring hungrily on Ceanothus in the back garden and a white-flowered evergreen whose name I can never retain in the front. At one point two of them started a fight and flew off at high speed in chase of each other - they are extremely strong fliers; they have to be to make their great migration. The Painted Lady is (as the name suggests) a showily marked and easily recognised species, and most summers, if you keep your eyes peeled, you'll probably spot a few. But some years they reach these shores in great waves and can turn up anywhere - I once saw one battling gamely with gusty winds right under Hadrian's Wall. Tomorrow's early sightings give me hope that this might be a 'Painted Lady summer'...
they look a lot like tortoiseshells don't they
ReplyDeletemy butterfly sightings are still mostly limited to cabbage whites so far this year
Bigger, tougher, much stronger fliers Worm... And I've just seen half a dozen more of them in the course of a short stroll in Holland Park! It's looking good...
ReplyDeleteLovely! Where I live, "painted lady' refers to the pastel-hued Victorian houses. Yesterday the hub and I took a long walk through a creek-cleaved park and saw a beautiful butterfly -- mainly black and spotted yellow but with an elegant luna-blue edge to its wings. Know what it might be, Nige?
ReplyDeleteSounds lovely Susan - not one I know though, must be one of your native species...
ReplyDeleteif you are in the US susan, i'd hazard a guess that you saw a 'Mourning Cloak', known to us in the UK as a Camberwell Beauty
ReplyDeleteThank you, Worm! Might be that, but might also be something as simple as a female black swallowtail (I just looked up species native to my area). They are such beautiful, ephemeral creatures, even when they are fluttering gracefully atop a piece of dung.
ReplyDeleteNow that's what I call bathos, Susan. Magnifique!
ReplyDeleteThursday updte - more Painted Lady action in Kensington Gardens today.
ReplyDeleteFriday morning - 10 more in course of short walk to work, through streets of Kensington. It is a Painted Lady Summer - rejoice!
ReplyDelete