Butterfly Survey 1976-2025
Painted Lady
wingspan: 50 mm male and female similar
Habit: Swift gliding flight over fields, gardens, parks and urban settings, dwelling occasionally to take nectar among brambles and other herbage, but also on garden flowers and flowering shrubs. No other of the colourful, large butterflies has such a pale underwing, which means in flight, even a fleeting glimpse will reveal the butterfly as a Painted Lady.
The Painted Lady follows an overlapping breeding pattern in various countries along a migratory route from Africa, sometimes arriving here in great swarms, almost at the extent of its Northerly range. The butterfly can be seen in the UK from early Summer onwards, but in common with the other vanessids that overwinter as butterflies, it can also be seen in spring. 2010 proved an explosive year for the species, with an estimated hundred million butterflies on the move. 2011 came and went and not a single butterfly was seen locally, implying a breeding and migratory mechanism to be researched. UK bred, late generation, butterflies were observed flying back South in reverse migration during late 2010, which. under certain adverse weather conditionds, might well have put the next breeding cycle at risk.
History: Chalmers Hunt records the invasions we are familiar with, from 1856 right through to 1952 in about thirteen irregularly spaced intervals. Of course the periods in which wars raged all over Europe are excluded, but it is a fact that the war was as much about men and women as about munitions, and lepidoptera and indeed other natural sciences did not stop for bombs, as indeed neither did the creatures they studied.
Larval Foodplant: nettle, thistle, burdock - eggs laid singly- larvae typically dark and spiny.
Status: common - fluctuating massively from year to year
WH - White Hill Shoreham, BC - Bromley Common, Ha Hayes --BN Bromley North - Ey Eynsford - Orp Orpington
By Rodney Compton, with special thanks to Howard Walmsley