Red Admirals

Red admirals are currently the most common butterflies in our garden, emerging on the sunny days, or even for short  periods during sunny intervals in the colder, greyer days, to feed on our abundant verbena and michaelmas daisies. So there have been moments when we've seen up to nine red admirals and only a couple of whites and a single tortoiseshell.

The - very smart - red admirals we're seeing at the moment are a brood produced by immigrants from the near continent which arrived in May/June. Their British-born brood goes on feeding until October when, so most websites tell me, they die. However, after recent discoveries of an amazing, long-distance return flight by the painted ladies - see previous blog post here - one wonders whether the red admirals do the same. This would seem logical as otherwise there seems no point in producing this UK brood if it just dies out.

That there is a return migration is hinted at by the Butterfly Conservation website: "Red admiral numbers build up during the summer, often peaking in early autumn. At this stage, there is a return migration southward to warmer parts of Europe." However, there is no detail, though the site does suggest that some red admirals are now over-wintering in the warmer parts southern England.

Perhaps further research is being carried out at present, in the same way as it has been for the painted lady,  that will clarify what happens, this made possible by new ways of tracking relatively small insects travelling over remarkably long distances.