There has been an explosion of Red Admiral butterflies passing through Upstate NY and probably elsewhere. They say they are migrating from Mexico to Canada and were pushed off course by a storm, and will be mostly gone by tomorrow. But what a treat to see something so unusual! I never saw a Red Admiral. A few years ago in the fall we saw Monarchs by the hundreds going south. This makes me unnaturally happy.
And the honeysuckle has attracted scores of bees today, in the hot sun, workin’ it!
[Looks up Red Admiral Butterfly]
Is that what those are? We have so many of them around here I’ve been swatting them out of the way when I walk around outside.
We have a lot of them here in Chicago, too. They’ve been around for at least 3 weeks, so some off-course migration is an unlikely explanation. One local expert says the numbers are 10 times normal. Nature's red army flies into suburbs on gossamer wings
I’m in Texas, we’ve had these along with ridiculous amounts of other butterflies. We’ve also had the best wildflower bloom that I can remember. Things are starting to turn brown now but a month or so ago it looked like a Disney cartoon around here.
A couple of years ago I encountered a massive butterfly hatch in Lassen National Park. It was a surreal experience hiking the trails through what seemed to be an unending swarm of them.
Last week a took a (sorta) long bike ride on the local trails. At one point I was literally in a cloud of butterflies. It seemed like they were flying formation with me. I have the video on my phone, but with no dataplan, I don’t know how to remove it (to a pc, or youtube, etc.).
This was in Texas, just west of Fort Worth if it matters. I’ve really never seen clouds of them like that.