Vanessa cardui

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)

2024 photographs highlighted in yellow. Click on any photograph to go to an enlarged picture, or simply scroll down the page.


15332_male_Bouche du Rhône_22May09	15206_sex?_Var_11May09	13740_female?_Vaucluse_23Aug08	48567_female_Rhône_19Jul21

49310_female?_Var_8Jun22	48585_female_Rhône_19Jul21	38621_sex?_Pyrénées-Orientales_17Jul15	44610_sex?_Alpes-Maritimes_18Jul17

49311_female?_Var_8Jun22	40148_ovum_Var_19Apr16

2003 was an exceptional year for cardui and huge numbers arrived in the UK. At the very end of September 2003 and they were still arriving in numbers at the Dorset coast on the cliffs. In 2006 in southern France they were present everywhere in huge numbers, especially on Buddleia bushes where they could be counted in tens on each bush. They have mass migrations from north Africa in exceptional years and may even be semi-resident in the extreme south of Europe.

All of this was dwarfed by 2009 - the "Painted Lady Year" - when the migration was enormous, with a billion estimated to have reached the UK. I witnessed the start of the migration in southern France with a trail where one was flying overheard every three seconds for hours on end and this was being repeated all across the south coast of France. On my route back to the UK in July I saw hundreds on Buddleia bushes just south of Calais.

Subsequent years have produced much smaller numbers, but 2019 saw cardui in significant numbers, both in France and the UK, but nowhere near the mass migration of 2009.

ref	sex	observations	alt. m
15332	M	a fresh specimen, showing the beautiful fiery orange of the uph.	35
15206	?	a slightly worn individual, perhaps not surprising for a migrant.	185
13740	F?	I suspect this is a female based on body shape and length.	750
48567	F	a female, but not quite the reddish hue of others, especially 13740. 48585 is the underside.	180
49310	F?	possibly a female, but with Vanessids, it is very hard to determine the sex. Maybe all on this page are females. 49311 is the underside.	200
48585	F	a female, the underside of 48567. The unh ground colour is rather brown than grey, and the pattern gives a clue as to why cardui is of the same genus as Red Admiral (V. atalanta), a species it hardly resembles in any other respect.	180
38621	?	a fresh and crisply-marked individual.	1820
44610	?	another underside, slightly more subtle in colouring than 38621.	1550
49311	F?	the underside of 49310, also crisply-marked.	200
40148	OVUM	*a very young cardui* - an egg laid only moments earlier.**	220