Misc/Chat Painted Ladies ~ Butterfly Population Explosion

[packyderms_wife]

Well if you're in the midwest right now and go outside you might notice an unusual sight. Tons of butterflies that look sorta like monarchs but only smaller.

They're called Orange Painted Ladies.

Apparently due to the warmer spring and the unusual temps this summer it's been a banner year for painted ladies, red painted ladies, monarchs, swallowtails, and the like.

The Painted Ladies do migrate, typically to southern Texas, and will start migrating southward here in about a week. So get outside and enjoy some painted ladies.

The ones in my yard are having a field day with my garlic chives, wish they'd sit still long enough to get a photo of them.

According to the show on IPR this morning Painted Ladies pollinate over 500 different plants, as do their cousins the Red Painted Ladies. Yes you can rear them yourself, and yes they are somewhat threatened, hence the special show today about them, their habitat, etc.

 

[packyderms_wife]

comparison

 

[packyderms_wife]

 

[packyderms_wife]

 

[packyderms_wife]

http://journalstar.com/lifestyles/h...cle_47b3dbd5-2c35-5bd8-988c-02a397fd452d.html

There's a butterfly explosion in Lincoln. Here's why.

NANCY HICKS Lincoln Journal Star Sep 7, 2017 Updated Sep 7, 2017

Painted lady butterflies occupy most of the space on sedum plants in the Woodsshire neighborhood on Wednesday.

Painted lady butterflies are apparently migrating through the Lincoln area this week, with sightings of masses of butterflies.

Several people with butterfly reports and pictures contacted Jody Green, with Nebraska Extension in Lancaster County on Wednesday.

One picture showed 32 butterflies on one plant, said Green, the urban entomologist educator.

Green said she had occasional painted lady butterfly reports last month, including a burst earlier in August that was a concern to soybean growers. Painted ladies can lay eggs on soybeans and the larvae will feed on the plant.

But the earlier sightings were nothing like the reports Wednesday, Green said.

People are generally pretty excited to see the butterflies, though there are a few who don’t like them smashing into their car, she said.

Painted lady butterflies, aka thistle butterflies and cosmopolitan butterflies, migrate, and their migrations could be 9,000 miles spanning six generations, according to Green.

They are also found on every continent but Antarctica and Australia, hence the name cosmopolitan butterfly.

They are also not super picky, survive in many habitats, and often lay their eggs on thistles, hence the name thistle butterfly.

These butterflies in Lincoln may be migrating, or getting ready to lay eggs for the next cycle.

The butterflies will not damage plants as an adult. They will not bite or harm humans. They are just sucking nectar from flowers, Green said.

"So enjoy them, appreciate them. Who knows when we will have a butterfly explosion again?" she said.

 

[packyderms_wife]

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2017/sep/08/lawrence-experiencing-explosion-painted-lady-butte/

Lawrence experiencing an explosion of painted lady butterflies just in time for Monarch Watch’s fall open house

A painted lady butterfly feeds in a St. Paul, Minn., garden, Sept. 11, 2003, before migrating to warmer climate. (AP Photo/ Janet Hostetter)
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By Joanna Hlavacek
September 8, 2017


It’s not just you. Lawrence is indeed experiencing a butterfly explosion, with sightings of the painted lady variety especially plentiful over the last few days.

Thousands, if not millions, of butterflies are passing through the Lawrence area right now on their southbound winter migration routes, and ecologist Chip Taylor says the phenomenon is not to be missed.

“This is probably the largest migration of that species I’ve seen in over 30 years,” said Taylor, who serves as director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas. “If you look for them, you can see them flying across parking lots as they’re zipping from one place to another.”

If you’ve yet to spot their orange-and-black wings fluttering around town, you’re in luck — on Saturday, Taylor and his colleagues are hosting their annual fall open house at Monarch Watch headquarters on KU’s west campus. The free, all-ages event will take place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Foley Hall, 2021 Constant Ave.

There’s a tree in the Monarch Watch garden that’s become a painted lady hotspot in recent days, Taylor said.

“We were out there yesterday and there must have been 200 or 300 butterflies on this tree,” he said. “It was pretty spectacular.”

With any luck, the thousands of bees and hundreds of migrating butterflies will still be buzzing about the tree Saturday for the open house, Taylor said. As usual, visitors will have their pick of family-friendly activities, including tours of the Monarch Watch garden and labs, monarch tagging demonstrations and plenty of hands-on interactions with butterflies in various growth stages.

This year, instead of the usual monarch chrysalis, kids who attend the event will be given their own painted lady chrysalis to take home.

Although they’re sometimes mistaken for the similarly patterned monarchs, the painted lady is actually among the world’s most abundant and widespread butterflies, Taylor said, and “it’s really quite a pretty butterfly” at that.

When they’re not stopping for a quick drink of nectar, the butterflies are heading southwest on a migration route similar to that of the monarchs expected to pass through the Lawrence area in another week or so.

Unlike this year’s plentiful painted lady migration, however, monarch populations have taken a sharp decline in recent years partially because of habitat loss. Specifically, destruction of the land where milkweed — the host plant for monarch caterpillars — once thrived.

Mia Talley, 15, of Baldwin, releases a monarch butterfly after tagging it Saturday, Sept. 19, 2015, during Monarch Watch's monarch tagging event on the site of a wetland restoration project on the east side of Clinton Lake.
Photo by Richard Gwin

Mia Talley, 15, of Baldwin, releases a monarch butterfly after tagging it Saturday, Sept. 19, 2015, during Monarch Watch's monarch tagging event on the site of a wetland restoration project on the east side of Clinton Lake.

That’s why Taylor and his colleagues make milkweed available, free of charge, to large-scale restoration projects, schools and educational nonprofits. Visitors at Saturday’s open house can also learn about starting their own butterfly gardens at home.

“We want to do something for the public, but we’re also trying to draw attention to the fact that there is a serious conservation issue here,” Taylor said. “… It’s part of our responsibility as stewards of the Earth.”

Partially thanks to this summer’s favorable weather conditions, monarch migration this month should be “one of the better ones in several years,” Taylor predicts.

He’s hoping that’ll translate to prime conditions at next weekend’s tagging event, slated for 8 a.m. to noon Sept. 16 at the Baker Wetlands Discovery Center, 1365 North 1250 Road.

“The weather for the 16th looks like it’s going to be not only favorable for tagging, but the weather’s going to push a lot of butterflies into the area when we do this tagging,” Taylor said.

Last year, the public helped Monarch Watch tag more than 600 butterflies. This year, he said, should be even more successful.

“One of the things that Monarchs do is they connect people with something large and natural and somewhat mysterious,” Taylor said. “Some of those butterflies passing through here came from North Dakota and South Dakota and probably Wisconsin and maybe Winnipeg (in Manitoba) … that’s a pretty awesome journey to contemplate.”

In the meantime, Taylor said, look out for the painted ladies. Their migration only began two or three days ago, and in just another few days, they’ll be gone.

For more information on Monarch Watch, including this month's open house and tagging event, visit monarchwatch.org.

 

[packyderms_wife]

https://www.thoughtco.com/facts-about-painted-lady-butterflies-1968172

7 Fascinating Facts About Painted Lady Butterflies

by Debbie Hadley
Updated September 07, 2017
Are you raising painted lady butterflies in your elementary school classroom? Do these familiar butterflies visit your yard? Here are 7 fascinating facts about the painted lady, or Vanessa cardui.

1. PAINTED LADIES SOMETIMES MIGRATE.
The painted lady is an irruptive migrant, meaning it’s a species that migrates independent of any seasonal or geographic patterns. Some evidence suggests that painted lady migrations may be linked to the El Niño climate pattern.


2. WHEN PAINTED LADIES DO MIGRATE, THEY OFTEN DO SO IN LARGE NUMBERS.
When conditions are right, the painted lady migration may number in the hundreds of thousands of individuals. The population that moves from North Africa to Europe includes millions of butterflies. Painted ladies fly low when migrating, usually only 6 to 12 feet above the ground. This makes them highly visible to butterfly watchers, but also rather susceptible to colliding with cars.

3. PAINTED LADIES FLY FAST AND FAR.
These medium-sized butterflies can cover a lot of ground, up to 100 miles per day during their migration. A painted lady is capable of reaching a speed of nearly 30 miles per hour. Painted ladies reach northern areas well ahead of some of their more famous migrating cousins, like monarch butterflies. And because they get such an early start to their spring travel, migrating painted ladies will feed on spring annuals, like fiddlenecks (Amsinckia).

4. THE PAINTED LADY IS THE MOST WIDELY DISTRIBUTED BUTTERFLY IN THE WORLD.
The painted lady inhabits every continent except Australia and Antarctica. You can find painted ladies everywhere from meadows to vacant lots. It's sometimes called the cosmopolitan butterfly, because of its global distribution.


5. PAINTED LADY CATERPILLARS EAT THISTLE.
Thistle, which can be an invasive weed, is one of the painted lady caterpillar's favorite food plants. The painted lady probably owes its global abundance to the fact that its larvae feed on such common plants. The painted lady also goes by the name thistle butterfly, and its scientific name—Vanessa cardui—means "butterfly of thistle."

6. MALES USE THE PERCH AND PATROL METHOD FOR FINDING MATES.
Male painted ladies actively patrol their territory for receptive females in the afternoon. Should he find a mate, he will usually retreat with his partner to a treetop, where they will mate overnight.

7. PAINTED LADY CATERPILLARS WEAVE TENTS.
Unlike other caterpillars in the genus Vanessa, painted lady larvae construct their tents from silk. You'll usually find their fluffy shelters on thistle plants. Similar species, such as the American lady caterpillar, make their tents by stitching leaves together instead.

 

[Jackpine Savage]

5. PAINTED LADY CATERPILLARS EAT THISTLE.
Thistle, which can be an invasive weed, is one of the painted lady caterpillar's favorite food plants. The painted lady probably owes its global abundance to the fact that its larvae feed on such common plants. The painted lady also goes by the name thistle butterfly, and its scientific name—Vanessa cardui—means "butterfly of thistle."

We have tons of them around us up here in MN as well. Literally a cloud of them when we drive down the driveway.

Our land renter showed up on a Sunday morning a couple weeks ago. He said they came up on the jet stream from Colorado. Unfortunately the thistle caterpillar's second favorite food is soybean leaves. They have been spraying the crap out of the soybeans. It's too wet to drive a sprayer out in the fields so they been using airplanes.

We had to lock our bees in the hives so they could spray.

 

[summerthyme]

I love them, and the somewhat related Red Admiral butterfly. Not common around here, but plentiful enough. I do remember one remarkable fall day when I was out picking apples in the front yard orchard (we planted 6, semi-dwarf trees along the driveway about 25 years ago) and I noticed many individual Painted Lady butterflies landing on our newly sided house... and then vanishing. I started watching closer... they were crawling up under the siding, apparently to hibernate!

On a related note, our Monarch population is on a strong upswing here. Last year, I swear, I only saw two Monarchs the entire summer. This year, I was seeing a dozen or more mating pairs every day from early July on. For my grandson's birthday in July, we gave him a mesh cage and several Monarch eggs... he raised them all to butterflies and let them go.

Summerthyme

 

[packyderms_wife]

I love them, and the somewhat related Red Admiral butterfly. Not common around here, but plentiful enough. I do remember one remarkable fall day when I was out picking apples in the front yard orchard (we planted 6, semi-dwarf trees along the driveway about 25 years ago) and I noticed many individual Painted Lady butterflies landing on our newly sided house... and then vanishing. I started watching closer... they were crawling up under the siding, apparently to hibernate!

On a related note, our Monarch population is on a strong upswing here. Last year, I swear, I only saw two Monarchs the entire summer. This year, I was seeing a dozen or more mating pairs every day from early July on. For my grandson's birthday in July, we gave him a mesh cage and several Monarch eggs... he raised them all to butterflies and let them go.

Summerthyme

Same here for the monarchs AND the swallowtails which I hadn't seen in the better part of a decade. This year we have quite a few of those bright blue swallowtails on our thistle plants in the yard.

 

[packyderms_wife]

We have tons of them around us up here in MN as well. Literally a cloud of them when we drive down the driveway.

Our land renter showed up on a Sunday morning a couple weeks ago. He said they came up on the jet stream from Colorado. Unfortunately the thistle caterpillar's second favorite food is soybean leaves. They have been spraying the crap out of the soybeans. It's too wet to drive a sprayer out in the fields so they been using airplanes.

We had to lock our bees in the hives so they could spray.

It pains me to hear that they are spraying the caterpillars.

 

[vessie]

I love watching and counting the many butterflies in my yard!

I do not use any pesticides in any form on my property and I'm seeing a huge number of a very rare butterfly in western Wa. called the Boisduvall which is a gorgeous Lilac blue.

They started to be all but distinct here because of over development which was destroying their habitat.

We have a ton of wild lupine here which I keep on the property just for this purpose of keeping them fed. The lupine is part of their lifecycle.

And also wild buckwheat. They Love the purple coneflowers too.

We have some other nice exotic butterflies that have shown up here this summer also.

I always keep a wide shallow dish of water for them and butterflies love a nice muddy area on a hot day as they draw nutrients out of the mud. V