west coast lady ~ 10/01/14 ~ Cooper Molera Garden

west coast lady nectaring on common heliotrope

Vanessa annabella nectaring on Heliotropium arborescens
(Shapiro)

Boraginaceae

I've seen a fair number of west coast ladies this unusually warm coastal summer, but only here in town since I'm rarely out in the field late enough in the afternoon to see these beauties.  When I decided to pursue studying butterflies this year, Andy made a request early on that I be home for dinner if at all possible.  Eating dinner together is important to us, and he used to bring me take-out when I worked late at the office.  The nice thing now is he doesn't mind cooking if I'm too pooped out from a day of hiking.  It may seem old-fashioned, but it works for us.

Usually, I'll spot the west coast ladies swirling-flirting with their more numerous and bossy cousins, the red admirals, around tall west-facing backdrops, be it trees or buildings.  This particular spot in the Cooper Molera Garden is great for seeing all kinds of butterflies because of the south-sided warmth of the surrounding historic buildings and this pleasantly scented garden bush.  The flowers look to me like a cross between heliotropes and fiddlenecks, but the soft leaves and huge bushy shape throw me.  The volunteer-run Cooper Store has several handfuls of index-carded photos of the plants in the garden with their IDs.  The next time I'm in, I'll try to remember to look-up this garden plant.

ps 10/15/14 - Thanks to Ken's comments, I now have an ID and corrected the above.

painted lady ~ 04/29/14 ~ Pinnacles

painted lady

Vanessa cardui

The ladies are migrating!  Hundreds, if not thousands!  These mass numbers do not happen every year.  I've seen a steady flow of painted ladies in the area for weeks, but now it's like they kicked it into high gear.  They're the hot rods of the butterfly world, complete with a flame motif on the top side of their forewings. Without a time-keeping device, I estimated one passed by me every 3 seconds in the wide open spaces, spilling down over the Pinnacles rocks (wow!), all heading northwest.  It felt like I was standing in a river of butterflies.  It was phenomenal!  I kept taking pictures, hoping to get something other than painted, even if it was blurry.  They do move rather fast.  All painted, fresh, worn, larger, smaller.  Some of the fresher and larger ones made leisurely stops for mud-puddling or nectaring on blue dicks and other flowers.  The last time I remember a migration like this was St. Patrick's Day 2005 when I played hookey from work.  Eh-hem.  Art Shapiro wrote a nice summary of CA's experience with painted lady migrations.  2005 may have been a bigger migration (3 every second), but I'll be curious to hear what people think about this year's mass migration when all is said and done.  Art quotes they "fly like bats out of Hell."  That's an incredibly good description of what it's like.  Keep an eye out for them, they may be heading your way.

ps 04/30/14 @ 4:00pm - I just heard that this mass migration has only been seen near the coast.  Interior CA hasn't seen much... yet.

pss 04/30/14 @ 6:30pm - The first wave just started hitting Davis, CA, all fresh looking and large.

pss 05/03/14  - It looks like the migration wave has ended here.  I don't know how heavy it ever got in Davis, but I've been told it's done there, too.  The same day I saw these massive numbers at Pinnacles, they were also seen moving heavily through the San Jose area.  Very cool.

west coast lady ~ 06/27/10 ~ Rec Trail

west coast lady
Vanessa annabella

This "lady" was defending its territory (or was it flirting?) with the red admiral shown below in a frenetic butterfly swirl and chase. The red admiral was definitely the aggressor in this encounter. Shapiro states the two species can hybridize. To see what this hybrid V. atlanta var. edwardsi looks like check out BugGuide.net.

red admiral ~ 06/27/10 ~ Rec Trail

red admiral
Vanessa atalanta

The flash went off for the first photograph and I kinda like the result. If all I had was that pic, I'd have a hard time identifying this butterfly. Usually at rest, red admirals show much more of the underside of their forewing with distinctive red, blue, and white stripes (a little early for the 4th of July). Click on the common name above to see what I mean. From the topside, the red stripes makes it obvious which butterfly this is. Red admirals are quite common around here and are indeed common around the world. Like buckeyes, they like to sun themselves in the afternoon on dirty paths, which doesn't make for a pretty backdrop.

American lady
Vanessa virginiensis

On the wing, I always get American ladies mixed up with west coast ladies (V. annabella) and painted ladies (V. cardui). I have a suspicion that each flies distinctively (you know, fluttery or irratic or with a group or only along woods-meet-grassy areas kinda of thing), but I haven't seen this kind of description in the literature. Glassberg makes his typical off comment (and it is helpful), "American Ladies have big eyes and an open mind." The two large eyespots on the hindwing from below are what I look for to distinguish the American lady from the other two, which both have what look like 4 small eyespots... if I can actually catch one resting long enough to see. Plus, from above on the forewing, there is a tiny white dot in the orange cell under the black tips, but you'd have to use photographs or pinned specimens to notice this. Sigh...