I was out this morning when this youngster started zooming passed me. Of course the camera wasn't with me and as soon as I came back out with it, she was no where to be seen. I started stalking a Cabbage White instead but those little pretties won't sit still for anyone. The Red Admiral did come zooming back by and landed on the Cross Vine and just sat there while I took about 8 pictures. The sun was a little too bright on it but the picture came out pretty good. They lay their eggs on Nettles, I don't have stinging nettles but I think I have some Heart Leaf Nettles, I still need to research that a bit more to be sure. They also love to drink from fermented fruit...now to figure out a way to provide that for them. This is the first time I have actually seen a Red Admiral in the yard...and I was able to ID it with one of the new books I got for my birthday.:-D
I was just about to ask whether you used the butterfly books you got to ID it Toni. They are coming in useful already. I agree that a Cabbage White is a tough catch, good exercise chasing those chaps around.
I'm so glad this fine friend found your yard. That deep brown and bright orange is gorgeous. We had a big tree die across the creek one summer and lots of the carrion butterfies were on it all the time. Red Admirals,(we like to call him "red admirable")Question marks,Commas and red-spotted purples were there in numbers of 50. It was a beautiful sight for weeks. They must have been feeding on some "death sap." We put out rotten bananas for them once. We threw them up on the shed roof so the dogs couldn't reach them. Had a lot of flies but a few butterflies too. Next morning bananas, peels and all completely gone. It's wild and woolly here. We had so many cabbage whites one year we kept our badminton rackets handy and had quite a game of it.
From what my new books says, they are territorial and this one just might hang around for weeks and they might return in the fall too. I need to find some nettles and a hops vine to give them a reason to stay around.
If you don't get any hops this summer I can send some in the fall. They are too big already to transplant. They are a very easy and prolific perennial vine. They are also the food plant of question mark butterflies which is my primary reason to have them.
