Great British Lepidoptera

Painted Lady

(Vanessa Cardui)

Each May and June, Painted Ladies migrate to Great Britain from south-west Europe and North Africa, a distance of more than 600 miles (1,000km). In some years they are scarce, in others extremely common. Britain was inundated with Painted Ladies in 1980, so many that the numbers were impossible to estimate, but there were certainly more than the 30,000 recorded in 1948. Other notable years have been 1952, 1966, 1969 and most recently 2009.

The Painted Lady is a powerful flyer. When migrating it flies at about 8 or 10mph (13-15 kph), skimming over meadows and hedgerows. Some Painted Ladies reach the Shetlands and Iceland, but there is no evidence that they return in any numbers. The Painted Lady cannot survive a cold and humid British winter in any of its stages- egg, caterpillar, chrysalis or butterfly- but early migrants lay eggs on a wide variety of British wild flowers, giving rise to a second generation of butterflies in September and October. These die when the cold weather arrives.

When not migrating, the Painted Lady will settle down wherever there are flowers, perhaps on a good stand of Thistles or in a garden; devoting themselves to seeking out the nectar.