Painted Ladies

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 172, 16 April 1932, Page 18

Painted Ladies

(By .1. .Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S., for “The Dominion." >

THERE seems to be no love lost between the Painted Lady and her cousin, the New Zealand Red Admiral. This may be accounted for by their different dispositions. The Painted Lady is a gadabout, so coy and wary that she is seldom caught, and it must be i-oul'essed that, she is flighty. While New Zealand’s Red Admiral is content to stay in the Dominion, tbe Painted Lady, as a species, is almost cosmopolitan. She undertakes migrations that surprise entomologists, passing over hills, mountains, plains, valleys and vast, stretches of ocean. With all her fligbtiness sbe is timid. She seldom graces traffic-laden city streets, while the Red Admiral is seen not infrequently dodging vehicles, sometimes resting on the fences that shut out gardens from footpaths, sometimes almost fluttering into pedestrians’ faces. The Painted Lady is tickle. Tn one season, in January, February, March and the present month, Painted Ladies in New Zealand may be plentiful. In the following year, hardly a Painted Lady may be seen. Our Red Admiral is with us always. Enmity between the two species, as Mr. G. V. Hudson states in “New Zealand Butterflies and Moths." often leads Painted Ladies to take part, in encounters with Red Admirals. In language more like Henri Fabre's; Mr. Friedrich Sclinaek. in a German work now for the first time translated into English (“Tbe Life of tlie Butlei'lly”). describes tbe Painted Lady as a minx, meaning that, she is perl and wanton. This is bow he records ids experience with this butterfly: “It. was a hot, still day, a proper butterfly day, a dragonfly day, a grass and bush and flower day. The charming generation of summer-flies and ants and butterflies, the bumblebees and the beetles, were doing it. full Justice. In every nook and arbor in tbe grass, a summer festival was in full swing. My shadow fell across a thistle bush, whose flower surpassed in vividness all the many others round about it. Lol tlie flower moved, became endowed with the liveliest life. It was the thistle-butterfly, tbe Painted Lady, i had interrupted her in her parlour eating honey. “Does she mean tq aj me'! Shresd iauufeitUA she flutters

about me in circles. Then flies ahead. I follow her, the winged thistleflower. She is coming back. She toils in my wake, then shoots ahead; and so it goes on. She is winging me a message. She beckons, I obey. •Good,’ I say to myself, ‘I understand.’ She leaves me. She flits to a low mound, suddenly very busy sweeping in glissades and loops round the little hillock. I passed tbe same place that evening, returning from a ramble up the river. She was still there. “On another playground, oil a Utile lawn where tbe light sparkled on the grasses, though the flowers were already nodding drowsily, 1 met five other painted Ladies still gadding when the sad approach of night bad silenced everything. It was a congress. Were they tbe five ambassadors of the world’s continents, five envoys sent by millions far away? These Painted Ladies are born globe-trotters. Their passion to be moving drives them over vast distances. Winged gipsies, they love to travel in squadrons and battiilions from land to land. Sometimes their destinations lake them mouths to reach. I stand and watch my five Painted Ladies dancing their round. They trace their flight, above my head and about me. Strange that they should be precisely five; for each division of the earth, for each finger on my hand, for each sense, a butterfly.” One of tlie greatest migrations of the Painted Ladies was fifty-three years ago. Between June 3 and June 8. flocks loft Strassbourg. making duo north. One flock paused l<> rest at the St. Gothard Hospice. Two days later, they passed over R hoi weiler. A flock tbree-lifth of a mile broad crossed Wezikou, In Switzerland. Later, a massed descent was made on France. Later still, Ute migrants were seen from Lake Constance and from many other places. Butterfly-gazers believed that this strange flight, began In North Africa. Although they are the same species, Painted Toadies in New Zealand have not been seen in massed formation causing astonishment at; their resolution, determination and power of tight; but here individuals have been caught on mountains 5000 ft. or 6000 ft. high. The orange-red with which they deck their costumes is a means of identifying them. Officially, they tire ,Vanessa cardui, Th# New Zealand Red Admiral i?. .Vanessa