Where have all the Painted Ladies gone?
2009 will be described as an exceptional insect migration year. From mid May we must all have all seen Painted Lady butterflies in numbers as the leading edge of their mass migration hit south and east Wales as it moved north. Two months later the numbers seem to have attenuated, but having laid eggs we should be in for another eruption in numbers in August and September after they have defoliated thistles everywhere before they start to drift south again. Good Painted Lady years often mean good years for other continental migrant insects including Humming bird hawkmoth and numbers of migrant dragonflies such as Red veined Darter and the odd Lesser Emperor, the darter having got as far inland at Breconshire. Who knows this may be one of those years when a Monarch butterfly pitches up in the Vale of Glamorgan or further west. The great Monarch migration from Mexico north into the United States and back is well known. Their drift across the Atlantic in the autumn less so frequently accom
