The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Cracking, newly hatched Painted Lady Butterfly in the garden today. Anybody else getting this hatch yet?

We had two newly arrived pristine Painted Ladies in the garden yesterday (Thu) - on Buddleia (where else?) They were joined by (including) Peacock - first we've had for some time - Red Admiral and a few Small Tortoiseshells.

Regards,

Freddy

1 yesterday and 5 today in my Skellingthorpe garden. Cheers. Rick

17 in my garden today. They are hatching from Thistle patches - we watched one 'pumping up' it's wings at Gib Pt on sunday on a Thistle stem.

Hi Ed,
Keep counting upwards and prepare for some big figures as this should turn out to be an exceptional year for the Painted Lady - a 'one-off phenomenon'.
Richard Fox, a spokesman for Butterfly Conservation, has said that " by all calculations, it is possible that we could have up to a BILLION Painted Lady butterflies (in the UK) by early August."
As the egg, caterpillar and chrysalis together can last less than a month, the billion will essentially be the next generation from the 'millions' that arrived in the UK in May and June.

Regards,

Freddy

Truly amazing - I look foreward to a Painted Lady august - has it ever been this good??

Apparently, it looks as if it could be the best Painted Lady year since the 1960s.
Just playing with figures, but if Lincolnshire gets just 1% of the projected BILLION - that'll be 10 million and if the Gib Point/Skegness area gets just 1% of that total it'll be 100,000. The mind boggles.

Regards,

Freddy

And i thought the hundreds( possibly a few thousands) on Saltfleetby
Theddlethorpe n n r were a spectacle! cheers John

Quite a lot of Painted Lady butterflies and hundreds of Large Whites were coming in off the sea, during a family day out to Sutton on Sea on Saturday. There were also a lot of small spiders on web strands too - I never thought of spiders migrating ! I suspect that all of these were coming from nearby North Norfolk on a SE wind rather than across the North Sea. Painted Ladies were all fresh 2nd generation ones - except one really tatty and faded individual.

Alan

The reports of Painted Lady at Messingham Sand Quarries LWTR (MSQ) on this website (Lincs Butterfly News) throughout July provide an interesting record of the VERY slow initial build-up of numbers in the first 3 weeks of the month followed by a massive increase this last week :

July 1 - 1 (John T Goy)
16 - 4 (Stephen Routledge)
19 - 5 (Dave Wright)
20 - 6 (St. R)
23 - 29 (St.R)
25 - 56 (St.R)
28 - 83 (St.R).
(plus-added later) :
31 - 171(St.R)

Let's see what happens in August when the "projected BILLION" appear on the UK scene.

Regards,

Freddy