{"id":381,"date":"2009-08-02T11:31:16","date_gmt":"2009-08-02T09:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birding-and-wildlife-trips\/not-all-butterflies-are-painted-ladies\/"},"modified":"2009-08-02T11:31:16","modified_gmt":"2009-08-02T09:31:16","slug":"not-all-butterflies-are-painted-ladies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/birding-and-wildlife-trips\/not-all-butterflies-are-painted-ladies\/","title":{"rendered":"Not all butterflies are Painted Ladies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Painted Lady butterflies <\/strong>invaded Europe in their millions this spring, astounding many observers by the sheer volume of their migration<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/strong>However, the usual time for a birder to be showing interest in butterflies is the summer: there’s more butterfly and less bird activity. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Ebro Delta<\/strong>,\u00a0mid-July. With a young British birder<\/strong>, Max Levy and his parents.\u00a0Over two days we\u00a0saw at least a dozen of these handsome butterflies<\/strong>, which I initially identified as Monarchs<\/strong>\u00a0Danaus plexippus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Plain<\/p>\n

Max spotted the first one on\u00a018th July and then we saw about a dozen the next day. I got rather excited and subsequently reported our “Monarch” sightings\u00a0on a couple of forums. Luckily there are some\u00a0diligent and knowledgeable forum-goers out there, and I was promptly\u00a0redirected to the right identification: Plain Tiger<\/strong> Danaus chrysippus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Both of these butterflies breed in the Canary Islands<\/strong>. On the Spanish mainland the Plain Tiger<\/strong> (Spanish: “Mariposa Tigre” or “Monarca Africana”) has been recorded from all around the\u00a0coastline, parts of which it has colonized\u00a0in the last decade or so. Currently it breeds at\u00a0several localities, including the Ebro Delta. The Monarch<\/strong> is more restricted in range, but has bred alongside this species in the province of M\u00e1laga.<\/p>\n

Here’s another spectacular butterfly, the Cardinal<\/strong> Argynnis pandora. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"Cardinal<\/p>\n

I feel pretty confident about its identification (please!),<\/em> and that the photograph is my own, taken on the edge of the\u00a0Montsant<\/strong> range in mid-June. \u00a0In Catalunya<\/strong> the Cardinal is is a rare<\/strong> and localised species<\/strong> which shows significant variations from year to year.<\/p>\n

If interested in these attractive insects you could do much worse than download a pdf of Cynthia<\/strong>, the bulletin of the\u00a0CBM scheme<\/a>\u00a0(Catalan Butterfly Monitoring).<\/p>\n

Now you know what to do with those long, hot summers<\/strong>: when the birds go quiet, take a glance at the butterflies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Painted Lady butterflies invaded Europe in their millions this spring, astounding many observers by the sheer volume of their migration.\u00a0However, the usual time for a birder to be showing interest in butterflies is the summer: there’s more butterfly and less bird activity. Ebro Delta,\u00a0mid-July. With a young British birder, Max Levy and his parents.\u00a0Over two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding-and-wildlife-trips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-69","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}