Painted Lady

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 I saw one Painted Lady butterfly in the garden yesterday. These are really interesting migrants. Painted Ladies hatch out in Spain and North Africa. It appears that if there is a really good year that the butterflies are triggered to migrate if they reach a high population density. The butterflies migrate North utilising the prevailing SW winds. Sometimes they may go through another generation in mainland Europe before they reach us in Britain. These butterflies cannot survive a winter here at any stage of their life cycle so the individuals that make it here are doomed to die out (well some do migrate South at high altitude but most don't). The evolutionary advantage being that in North Africa  the remaining individuals have enough to live on and the species continues to thrive. Depending on the numbers in Africa and the wind direction there are sometimes huge numbers of these butterflies in this country in the summer - and some years we see hardly any. 


These butterflies tend to be the ones that are commercially available for schools who want to demonstrate the butterfly life cycle in the classroom so many young children will have come across them. I read that this is the only species of butterfly ever recorded in Iceland! Here is a clip of caterpillars getting ready to be chrysalises from a kit we bought for our granddaughter Sophie.



Diary
I saw a stoat (fleetingly) running through the garden yesterday to the consternation of the two red squirrels who were on the feeder at the time. ( I have seen stoats chasing the red squirrels in the past but have never witnessed a kill, but several near misses).
Regular readers will know that we set aside an area of our lawn for wildflowers in May. We have kept the square of wildflowers and the following images show the rather odd square in the middle of the lawn and a close up of the flowers. I am happy to report that the patch is a buzz with bees (mostly buff tailed bumble bees)




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