Seeking Red Admiral, Painted Lady, American Lady Sightings

[donald...@gmail.com]

From Royce Bitzer:

Spring has arrived, and I’m again requesting your sightings of Red Admirals, Painted Ladies, and American Ladies.  After the last three years with low numbers, it’s now looking like 2023 is going to be a more active, abundant, and exciting year for Red Admirals.  I’m still not sure how the Painted Lady population will develop this year, owing to the unusually intense and variable weather in California this past winter.

Red Admirals are now arriving in the upper Midwest, following two strong and very stormy weather systems that transported warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico into our area.  Red Admirals arrived soon afterward, with the first report from Omaha, Nebraska on April 4.  I spotted my first ones here in Ames, Iowa on April 7.  It’s likely they were here sooner, perhaps as early as March 31, but it was difficult to tell because cold weather followed each of the two frontal passages.  Since then, I’ve started receiving more reports from around the upper Midwest.

I’m seeking not only first sightings, but also sightings of migrating butterflies and sightings throughout the season.

How to report your sightings?  Go to either of my two reporting sites:

Red Admiral and Painted Lady Research Site

Red Admiral and Painted Lady Research Site (iastate.edu)

Vanessa Migration Project on iNaturalist

Vanessa Migration Project · iNaturalist

The iNaturalist project is especially good if you want to include photos of your sightings, and/or if you are already a regular observer on iNaturalist.

Thank you,

Royce Bitzer

Department of Entomology

Room 504, Science Hall 2

2310 Pammel Drive

Iowa State University

Ames, Iowa 50011  USA

The Red Admiral and Painted Lady Research Site

https://vanessa.ent.iastate.edu

Territorial behavior, migration, and distribution of Vanessa butterflies

Vanessa Migration Project on iNaturalist

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/vanessa-migration-project