Painted Lady 2
by Linda Brody
Title
Painted Lady 2
Artist
Linda Brody
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Painted Lady 2. With a very wet winter of 2019,clouds of butterflies migrating through Southern California captivated onlookers of this otherworldly spectacle.
The orange butterflies, called Painted Ladies, are known to travel annually from the deserts of Southern California to the Pacific Northwest. In March 2019, people took notice because of the sheer size of the migration: Scientists estimated the teeming Painted Ladies numbered in the millions.
The substantial rainfall in the deserts near the Mexican border, where the North American Painted Ladies lay their eggs, was the reason for the unusually large swarms. The rain caused plants to thrive, giving the painted lady caterpillars plenty of food to fuel their transformation.
The migrating painted ladies are fueled by a packet of yellow abdominal fat, stored from their caterpillar days, that enables them to fly hundreds of miles without stopping. (That fat is responsible for the yellow streaks on your car windshield if you happen to run into one.) When the fat reserve runs out, they will stop and breed. The next generation will continue the trek north. In the fall, the migration pattern reverses. But the southern journey is more leisurely. Without stored fat, the butterflies make more stops to drink nectar, and breed, along the way. They arrive in the desert in late fall and the cycle begins again.
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Uploaded
April 8th, 2019
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Viewed 464 Times - Last Visitor from Ottawa, ON - Canada on 04/20/2024 at 1:34 AM
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