Keeping with the Signs of Spring theme for Blog Posts this Spring, early May has seen a big arrival of Painted Lady Butterflies. My highest day total was on 3 May when I walked from St Aldhelms to Winspit and then followed the coast path back to the Coastwatch building at St Aldhelms, before returning to the car park via Emmetts Hill. This maximised my time on the coastal footpath and resulted in my seeing fifty-three Painted Lady Butterflies, mainly in what I think is Oil-seed Rape plants growing along the clifftop. My plant identification skills are not great so don't rely on the Oil-seed Rape identification being correct. While I only saw thirty-two Painted Lady Butterflies on 11 May, I covered a much shorter length of the coastal footpath and I think there would have been higher numbers had I walked the same route.
The Painted Lady Butterflies were very active in the sun and rarely settled for photos, albeit I didn't try very hard to get more photos. About lunchtime, it quickly clouded over as a front arrived and they quickly became a lot more settled, although they were landing and immediately folding their wings.
Dingy Skippers have also just started to fly at St Aldhelms. I saw my first flying there about a week earlier, with two more flying on 11 May, one of which posed for this photo.
