Number of nymphalids

The new butterfly summer season has started unusually early this year due to a low-snow and mostly warm winter. The first butterflies flew on March 8. Today beautiful sunny weather, +16 degrees, went to the surrounding forest and marveled at the abundance of Nymphalis xanthomelas. In some places, you can see 5 individuals at the same time. Frolic, chase each other, form pairs, some sit on their hands and backpack. Noticeably smaller Polygonia c-album. There are also occasional lemongrass and moth Archiearis parthenias.
2012 and 2013 were remembered for a large number of xanthomelas (also hawthorns). In mid-summer 2012, all the roadsides of the county highway were strewn with the corpses of xanthomelas hit by cars. At first, it seemed that they were being mowed down by some kind of epizootic caused by excessive numbers, but the large number in 2013 refuted this assumption. Looks like. and this year will be a fruitful one for xanthomelas. It is interesting that Aglais urticae has been growing in small numbers all these years, even in places where there are significant arrays of nettles. Below are some illustrations.

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The new butterfly summer season has started unusually early this year due to a low-snow and mostly warm winter. The first butterflies flew on March 8. Today beautiful sunny weather, +16 degrees, went to the surrounding forest and marveled at the abundance of Nymphalis xanthomelas. In some places, you can see 5 individuals at the same time. Frolic, chase each other, form pairs, some sit on their hands and backpack. Noticeably smaller Polygonia c-album. There are also occasionally lemongrass and moth Archiearis parthenias.

In the Leningrad region, the situation is approximately the same, although it is almost 2 times colder. On March 9, a colleague observed xanthomelas in the south of the region in Luga. On March 22, after a period of winter weather, with temperatures around plus 10, they flew en masse already in Pavlovsk, near St. Petersburg. At the same time, only one urticaria was observed (plus the same lemongrass and one parthenias). But N. polychloros, which was not uncommon in the 90s, is now practically absent.

polychloros is generally a problem. I saw the last one about 10 years ago, although earlier the species was widespread, and only a few specimens of xanthomelas have been known in our region since the 70s. now the opposite is true the proverbial waves

Today it is even warmer, +18, I went to another forest. The wintering season of xanthomelas also went well here, they frolic in large numbers not like in March. There are a lot of C-album and spring moth plants in some places. Nymphalis vaualbum actively behaves, unlike xanthomelas, they seem to be constantly in search of food. Combines all types of excrement together, only lemongrass aristocrats prefer the first flowers of honeydew. It seems that the wave of Aglais io has greatly declined - no, I didn't meet a single copy in two days, although last spring there were a lot of them, and in the summer there were quite a lot of them.

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Here is such a beauty caught at work.This is my third find of this rare species

This post was edited by Yevgeniy88-03.10.2014 18: 24

That's how I caught this beauty at work.This is my third find of this rare species

Evgeny, why do you consider this species rare?

In our Belgorod region, the species is considered not rare, but very rare.

This post was edited by Yevgeniy88-03.10.2014 19: 21

24/07/15 Nikolaev. For the first time in my life I saw a mass flight of pandoras (thousands of individuals in sight)! Within the city limits there is a planted oak grove with inclusions of other hardwoods. There is a damp gully overgrown with dense grassy vegetation. Lots of burdock. In one bush, up to a dozen butterflies were feeding at the same time. I observed this phenomenon from 7 to 9 in the morning, and the higher the sun rose, the more butterflies there were. They were not afraid at all, they sat on your hand, you could look at all the fresher and larger specimens, although almost all of them were quite fresh. In addition to pandora, there were many galatea, jartin, lupin, latonia.
There were quite a lot of Pandoras last year as well. But this is just in bulk, everywhere in the city on all flower beds, on all vacant lots, on beams everywhere where there is a burdock.
Apparently, the wet beginning of summer contributed to mass reproduction. Although other nymphalids didn't breed like that.

24/07/15 Nikolaev. For the first time in my life I saw a mass flight of pandoras (thousands of individuals in sight)! Within the city limits there is a planted oak grove with inclusions of other hardwoods. There is a damp gully overgrown with dense grassy vegetation. Lots of burdock. In one bush, up to a dozen butterflies were feeding at the same time. I observed this phenomenon from 7 to 9 in the morning, and the higher the sun rose, the more butterflies there were. They were not afraid at all, they sat on your hand, you could look at all the fresher and larger specimens, although almost all of them were quite fresh. In addition to pandora, there were many galatea, jartin, lupin, latonia.
There were quite a lot of Pandoras last year as well. But this is just in bulk, everywhere in the city on all flower beds, on all vacant lots, on beams everywhere where there is a burdock.
Apparently, the wet beginning of summer contributed to mass reproduction. Although other nymphalids didn't breed like that.

Did you mean Maniola jurtina? Pronounced yurtina

In addition to pandora, there were many galatea, jartin, lupin, latonia.

Impressive.
And I was in a steppe gully with a bayrachny forest in the west of the town of Berislav in the Kherson region on July 20, and apart from the shashechnits and field mother-of-pearl, which are always there, I saw only three corner-winged nymphalids. Galatea, lupine-0, and only a few yurtinas. Although on July 10, near Kherson in the village of Solontsy, there were a lot of yurtins and several galatasas.

This post was edited by Wave Storm - 07/25/2015 14: 39

Yesterday I observed huge numbers of xanthomelas, I don't remember this in previous years. Perhaps it has something to do with late spring this year?

Yesterday I observed huge numbers of xanthomelas, I don't remember this in previous years. Perhaps it has something to do with late spring this year?

It all depends on what is meant by the word "it". If the fact of observation, then the connection is possible, then you know better. If the salvo departure of the mass of individuals on a particular day is quite likely. If it is just the mass number of individuals that survived the winter, then the relationship is less likely, since a prolonged diapause can only reduce the number (due to, say, fatally superfluous and sharp temperature transitions through zero), but not increase it.

Yes, it is possible... It got warmer, and they all flew out at once...
But for example, mourning women say they need a cold winter, without it they do not overwinter, I read somewhere on the forum...

In general, for such outbreaks, what is important is what happens in the caterpillar stage. Although wintering here is in the imago, so it may depend on the conditions of winter, but still
, on the contrary, we now have almost all the species wintering in the imago in a decline in numbers.

And this year we have three times less polychloroses (in terms of the number of individuals in the same areas) than last year. But lemongrass twice as much. Anglwings, admirals, and io are on the same level. I haven't seen any other mace-moustaches yet.

In August-the month of 2018, we have a large number of admirals in the south of Ukraine, at least in the Kherson region. 12.08 I was cycling through a forest plantation near the village of Chernyanka, where it was pleasantly cool, so admirals were constantly flying out from under the wheels. Now I just need to walk around the city of N. Kakhovka a little to meet a few pieces. Admirals can be found in the shadows of high-rise buildings, and among the branches of trees, both on busy streets and in courtyards. It is not very clear where they find food plants for caterpillars in our conditions, and we have a strong drought this year. And this is not only observed here: in the Vkontakte group "Club of Hawkmeal Lovers" people also wrote that there are a lot of admirals this year.

This post was edited by Wave Storm - 31.08.2018 11: 03

In the Ryazan region, in the Klepikovsky district, this summer I saw a noticeable increase in the number of admirals compared to previous years. In previous years, I observed several specimens over the entire summer, this year almost daily, sometimes several butterflies a day.

For the third year in a row, St. Petersburg has seen an unusually high number of Admirals. Especially this year - it seems that they are more common than other types of butterflies.
Wikipedia says: "The butterflies winter only in the southern regions of their range, since in the north (for example, in northern and central Eastern Europe) they usually either die or migrate to the south of their range and some of them return in the spring." Are they all stray?

This post was edited by Tivanik - 31.08.2018 14: 44

Hmm, perhaps we also have more admirals this August than on average.

By the way, about admirals, if anyone does not know: the name "admiral", apparently, goes back to the English" red admiral", and this is a distortion of the earlier name"red admiral". So the Navy has absolutely nothing to do with it (as far as I understand, the etymology of the words "admiral" and "to admiral" is different).

And therefore-ftopku all Russian (and other local) names. Vanessa atalanta, and all the cases.

Hmm, perhaps we also have more admirals this August than on average.

Probably it's all because of the instant spring

........
Wikipedia says: "The butterflies winter only in the southern regions of their range, since in the north (for example, in northern and central Eastern Europe) they usually either die or migrate to the south of their range and some of them return in the spring." Are they all stray?

Yes, this year there are a lot of them all over the middle zone.
What does "southern" mean? They probably winter in the south of the forest-steppe, and this is still not the south, but the middle strip. To the north, some authors allow rare cases of wintering in warm winters. In late spring and early summer, they fly north to the taiga and lay their eggs here. And the late summer generation is already mostly local.

It turns out that this admiral, whom I met in St. Petersburg on 17.06.2018, wintered and then flew 1000 km. And it looks pretty fresh.




Here's a comparison of the peacock's eye, met on 9.05.2018-you can immediately see that the butterfly overwintered.

Tivanik, he could have flown in from Z. The Baltic States, where there is no winter as such. For 1000 they certainly do not fly, but for 200-300 it is quite. However, even at the end of May this year, I saw 3 quite fresh admirals at the junction of the Ryazan and Penza regions, and locally in a forest area of less than 0.3 square kilometers. Despite the fact that these days I walked 10-15 km. That is, they could not even overwinter, but hatch out of the pupa (???). It is clear that the overwintered ones would be shabby. And they would clearly not have had time to go through the development cycle in the forest-steppe from overwintering butterflies.

This April-June, we had a powerful invasion of burdocks. The number of butterflies per kilometer of the route was almost universally estimated in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Moreover, according to the degree of wear on the wings, two waves of migrants were clearly traced. The second subsided just this week, the number fell to the background level. Interestingly, I did not see any caterpillars (at night with a lantern thistles regularly, and not only them). If it breeds in our country at all, it makes up barely 1% of the total population, the rest are migrants.

This post was edited by ENO-02.07.2019 01: 43

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCmIsTbRoJ8
Okodemik's opinion )

Tin is simple. Of course, I turned off the video in the first minute, not having endured this mournful sermon on mov, so I can judge the opinion of okodemik mainly by the short text.:

This year in St. Petersburg, too, there were an unprecedented number of burdocks. They were very rare before.

By the way, there are no admirals in sight this year. (The previous message is also mine)

And we have everything in place (and admirals-and year after year at the same points) + / - a couple of meters). Although, I think, the competition from thistles for nectar did not please them. I wonder if you can prepare a thousand or two of them (burdocks), could this be useful for research with a statistical component? After all, so much material is wasted for nothing.

This post was edited by ENO-02.07.2019 21: 56

By the way, there are no admirals in sight this year. (The previous message is also mine

For more than a week, as fresh together with perelivnitsami brazhnichayut.

By the way, there are no admirals in sight this year. (The previous message is also mine)

Admirals in St. Petersburg are always in the Summer Garden, they like it by the fountains - it's wet, they sit on the leaves of lime bushes and on the heads of statues. Sit on the platform of Virtues for 5-10 minutes, and you will definitely see. While there are old specimens, fresh ones will soon come. In the same place, if you lift your head and look for a long time into the crowns of ancient oaks, you can sometimes see oak marshmallows in July (it's getting colder now, I haven't flown yet). Finally, we see urticaria in the city, there was some kind of crisis with them.

I met the Admiral yesterday (22.05.2021) in St. Petersburg. It looks fresh. We had a rather cold winter. Did you spend the winter or fly in?

Previous message is mine.

I met the Admiral yesterday (22.05.2021) in St. Petersburg. It looks fresh. We had a rather cold winter. Did you spend the winter or fly in?

I flew in, otherwise I would have flown out earlier along with another "wintering trip". They don't spend the winter here. The Finns have so far noted 4 admirals on their territory, who also, I think, arrived.