If chasing butterflies is your family’s idea of a dream day, then you might want to pay a visit to California where the Painted Lady butterfly migration is currently underway. All you have to do is look up for an amazing view!
Following rainy periods in Mexico and the southwest United States, the orange and black-winged Painted Ladies, also known as Vanessa cardui, make their way north in droves this time of year, which makes for an incredible sight.
BUTTERFLY WATCH: Millions of butterflies are flying through LA on a #Butterflymigration. Have you seen any in your town? https://t.co/R3YA0XRnhq pic.twitter.com/75qJNfDesY
— KCAL News (@kcalnews) March 13, 2019
“We were seeing at least 100 of them a minute,” Doug Yanega, senior museum scientist at the University of California, Riverside’s Entomology Research Museum, told Los Angeles Curbed.
If weather remains mild, Yangea explained, the butterflies will continue to make their way across the skies as they they travel even further north in the next few months. Then in August they will make their way back down south again in a second migration for the winter.
It’s not a migration, it’s an invasion! Painted ladies everywhere in my garden, they are coming all the time, shadows over the skylights! A truly remarkable event!#paintedladies #Butterflymigration #FridayFeeIing pic.twitter.com/DuyrgdOw41
— Michele Steer (@Michsteer) March 15, 2019
Can’t make it to SoCal? You can always set your eyes on Twitter and Instagram where videos of these winged beauties are filling feeds for the moment with the hashtag #butterflymigration.
—Shahrzad Warkentin
Featured photo: Martina Misar-Tummeltshammer via Unsplash
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