They're coming !

[Anne Kilmer]

Woody Woods wrote:

> Guy,
> 
> All thanks to you (and others, hopefully, for what's coming) for the Vanessa
> observations. I have saved all information from leps-l regarding migrating
> Vanessa cardui. The exchange from a short time ago about whether they can or
> do undertake nocturnal migratory flights I forwarded a few months back to
> colleagues who have already made measurements of their nocturnal visual
> capabilities. Hopefully that work will be published within the next few
> months. It certainly will not establish whether V. cardui DOES migrate at
> night, but from preliminary results may possibly support the idea that they
> can.
> 
> Woody


There have been many reports on the British leps group, UK-leps, so I 
hope you're checking that, too. (Neil, note that, though I am American, 
I can tell British from English. I can also tell Canada and Mexico from 
the US, although in winter Florida is full of Canadians for some reason. 
  They may be the ones who screwed up the Butterfly Ballot of happy 
memory.) I am a member of uk-leps, although I am in the Republic of 
Ireland. I am soooooo sick of politics.

In Lisbon, I saw a small white butterfly ... I was on a bus at the time, 
so I have no idea what it was. (Had I meant a Small White, I would have 
said so.)

As I crossed the ocean, I watched for flying leps. Saw a good flock of 
flying fish, do those count? Around the Azores there were lots of 
seabirds, feeding (we were told) on the sardines. Started about four 
days out. My shipmates, clearly not birders, wondered where they slept 
at night. Maybe the butterflies perch upon sleeping terns at night? (One 
good tern deserves a moth-er.)
I saw no leps in the Azores, where we docked from 10 p.m. to about 1 
a.m. The winds had been against us, so the sails had been very little 
help, and we had to take on fuel. I hate to think what it costs to fill 
your tanks in the Azores. It was cold and windy.

A small bird joined us, about two days out from Lisbon, and perched on 
the lines to the sails. It was afraid of us, and kept moving from perch 
to perch as we moved about the ship.
I saw Orion to starboard and the Dipper to port, and five planets nicely 
lined up, but no leps, either by night or by day.
Now here I am in Ireland, and today the swallows are circling, their 
first day back, making themselves comfortable in my batthered garage, 
which is held up by spit and prayer.
So much for my single solitary Irish lep, not counting the moths (I 
don't do moths) ... probably swallowed by a swallow.
A dragonfly just banged against my window. Time to go out and play, I 
guess. Quick, while the sun's shining ...
Cheers
Anne Kilmer
Mayo, Ireland




> 
> "Guy Van de Poel & A. Kalus" wrote:
> 
> 
>>It's been raining the last couple of (probably only days but seems like)
>>months here in Germany. I was getting depressed by the weather, so made a
>>quick travel to Italy, Tuscany (hope that's the correct translation for
>>Toscana region), vicinity of Livorno to get some sun and butterflies.
>>Over there I've seen two (exact number - they were not the same specimens)
>>Vanessa cardui. The one I could get a better look at, she/he looked totally
>>exhausted, was quite battered with a lot of the scales lost and the outer
>>margins of the wings damaged. The weather will get even worse the next
>>couple of days, hope they survive so that their offspring makes it over
>>here.
>>Also saw a V. atalanta, rather fresh-looking, but that should be rather
>>normal as the species overwinters around the Mediterranean.
>>
>>Guy.
>>
>>Guy Van de Poel
>>Guy_VdP at t-online.de
>>
>>Royal Entomological Society of Antwerp
>>http://www.freeyellow.com/members/fransjanssens/index.html
>>
>>




 
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