Painted Ladies coming?

Three orange-brown butterflies with black and white markings on the pink flowers of chives
Painted Lady. Photo: Maurice Budden

Painted Lady butterflies are visitors to this country. Some years they only turn up in small numbers, but once in a while we get huge numbers. These butterflies reach us via Spain and France, and on 12 May, very large numbers of butterflies were seen streaming north through the Alicante Mountains in Spain.

In Dorset, we have started to have reports of some arriving:

15 May – 1
16 May – 22 (up to five seen at once, and the number includes the three in the photo above)
17 May – 7

We would like to keep track of these beautiful butterflies, so if you see one, please report it via our Recording Form.

If you need a bit of help to be sure of identifying them correctly, go to their page in our Species pages.

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