Red admiral
Ashley Wicks, a regular visitor to the reserve, has sent us a picture of a very early red admiral.
Red admirals (Vanessa atalanta) are a migratory species. Over two, sometimes three, generations, they fly north from areas around the Mediterranean. They usually reach the UK in May, arriving ready to breed.
In the reserve, the female lays her eggs in our nettle patches where the caterpillars make protective bivouacs by folding the nettle leaves and gluing them together with sticky silk. They only leave their shelters to eat.
The red admiral caterpillar has folded the stinging nettle leaf to make a shelter from which it emerges only to eat. The adult butterfly, feeding on ivy flowers, is newly hatched, a late season imago photographed in the reserve in October.
This next generation reaches adulthood at the end of the summer and through the autumn, and flies on northwards. At some point they turn back and head south, flying fast and very high, covering maybe two or three thousand miles in no more than a couple of weeks.
While there are many theories as to what triggers the turnaround, nobody seems to know for sure. Research conducted in the Baltic states has found that females travelling north are carrying developing eggs and are ready to breed but that females travelling south are not; they will not be in breeding condition until they reach their destination in the southernmost part of their range. Their offspring will overwinter as caterpillars, metamorphose into adults in the following spring and begin their own journey north.
Ashley’s red admiral is worse for wear; its wings are worn and its colours faded. It is either an early hatchling that has migrated here through some fairly adverse continental weather, or it is one of the few individuals that hibernate here in the south of the UK and has therefore endured one of the wettest winters on record. Whichever it is, there is blossom in the reserve for it to feed on and our nettles are coming up, ready to house the next generation of red admiral caterpillars.
Header image: red admiral ©Ashley Wicks (SCPLNR April 24)
Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 
Nice shot.
It is a nice shot. Butterflies fray as they age and the loss of scales fades their colour and this picture shows that clearly. This is a butterfly that has been through some stuff.
Yes indeed. Red Admirals are quite a hardy species when it comes to butterflies.
So the butterflies don’t have a home?
No. But it’s almost like there are two different kinds of adult: ones going north and one going south, neither with a home to go to where they can put their feet up. The two have different behaviours and different reproductive patterns; it’s very strange and I can’t imagine how it has evolved.