The Lady vanishes!
By drc726
12 comments
This was from Butterfly Conservation today and shows our counting the butterflies does help their research:
The mystery of the autumn disappearance of the Painted Lady has finally been solved.
Researchers working as part of a pan-European team showed that Painted Ladies leave Britain in the autumn and fly south. This ends decades of speculation that Britain was a dead end for the butterflies which cannot survive our winters.
The reason why these emigrants are rarely seen is that the Painted Ladies ascend hundreds of metres into the sky, out of sight of observers on the ground, in order to take advantage of favourable tailwinds. This discovery was made using radar that can detect tiny objects up to 1km altitude.
Members of the public played a vital part in the study too. Over 60,000 sightings of Painted Ladies across Europe during the boom year of 2009 were used to piece together the journeys undertaken by this amazing butterfly.
Some 10,000 people in Britain contributed by taking part in our online Painted Lady survey and the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme. All this effort revealed an epic 9,000 mile round trip, from sub-Saharan Africa to the Arctic Circle, undertaken by a succession of up to six generations of Painted Ladies each year.
- 31 Oct, 2012
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Comments
Thats amazing Denise, thankyou for the info......
31 Oct, 2012
Your welcome, its the 9,000 mile round trip that got me!
31 Oct, 2012
Great reading Drc....9,000 miles - what an amazing feat!
31 Oct, 2012
Very interesting information Denise
31 Oct, 2012
That's fascinating. Who would have thought butterflies did that ...
31 Oct, 2012
They are very wonderful insects. I bought 3 Buddleias for H.M.Jubilee to make a 'Butterfly Corridor' on my allotment beside a clay patch I didnt enjoy.
They can grow as high as they like.
31 Oct, 2012
I think it's great that they have always done this, but we have only just found out!
31 Oct, 2012
What a feat that must be for them,Denise..so good to read this,thank you.:o)
31 Oct, 2012
Its hard to understand, they look so delicate, I thought swallows had it hard but its incredible........
1 Nov, 2012
I am stunned that they can do this as it must mean they have considerable reserves on board when they set off?
1 Nov, 2012
wow! how can something so fragile do that? Totally mindblowing. Thanks for telling us the story Drc
4 Jul, 2013
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That's interesting :o)
31 Oct, 2012