The Bakersfield Californian

The last butterfly of the season is one of the prettiest,

Jon Hammond has written for Tehachapi News for more than 30 years. Send email to tehachapimtnlover@gmail. com.

Now that the year is nearly over and the temperatures have gotten cooler, there are far fewer insects flying about. However, I was in the Errea Garden in downtown Tehachapi recently and was paid a visit by a beautiful red admiral butterfly.

These eye-catching, medium-sized butterflies are known in Northern Europe as the last butterfly to be seen in autumn, and the same is sometimes true of them in the Tehachapi Mountains. Red admirals in Southern California have a flight period lasting from March through November.

Red admirals (Vanessa atalanta) have a wingspan ranging from a little under two inches to two and one-half inches, so they’re smaller than western tiger swallowtails or monarchs, but larger than the assorted skippers, whites, blues and other small butterflies that visit local flowers.

Red admirals are actually in the same genus, Vanessa, as the painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) that flow through the Tehachapi Mountains in huge numbers early each spring, in their mass migration northward to repopulate the U.S. and parts of Canada.

Some butterflies are wary and quite fast and flighty, but red admirals are the opposite: they are often quite calm about being observed or photographed, and at times will even land on or perch on people.

There are some butterfly caterpillars, like cabbage whites, whose appetites and the resulting damage to their host plants can make gardeners grumpy, but no one begrudges red admiral larvae their choice of a host plant: stinging nettle (Urtica dioica).

An adult female red admiral lays her eggs individually here and there on nettle plants, and the larvae hatch out and start eating leaves, unbothered by the stinging nature of the nettle plant.

A red admiral caterpillar will loosely fold or roll a nettle leaf and secure it with some silk, creating a green leaf taco in which to hide. The larva stays inside this leaf shelter while simultaneously munching on it. Once enough of the leaf has been eaten that the caterpillar is no longer concealed, it moves on to another leaf and creates another shelter.

When it reaches full size, which can take anywhere from two weeks to a couple of months, depending on the temperature, the red admiral hangs upside down from a stem or leaf, creating a slightly curled J shape, and forms a chrysalis.

After another few weeks go by, the lovely adult butterfly emerges, with shiny black wingtips dappled with white spots, a halo of orange on its forewings and hindwings, and a dark brown body. The dark colors have an iridescent sheen in sunlight.

Red admiral males are territorial, and will chase away other males to defend a territory. This apparently is a necessity for them to have a chance to hook up, because females are choosy and only males with territory will have an opportunity to mate.

The red admiral butterfly is found throughout North America, and is even one of only 13 species of butterfly to have made its way to the Hawaiian Islands. Located nearly 2,400 miles off the coast of California, in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, Hawaii is so remote that few butterfly species have managed to arrive there. Only two endemic species can be found in Hawaii along with the 13 newer arrivals.

Planting pollinator-friendly flowers just makes so much sense to me, because you not only get to enjoy the blossoms themselves, but all during the flowering season, you will get to watch a fascinating assortment of butterflies, bees, moths, hoverflies and even hummingbirds come to drink from your blooms.

And late in the year, when you figure you’ve seen the last of this year’s butterflies, a red admiral may bounce from flower to flower in a welcome, slow flutter of its shimmering black, orange and white wings.

Have a good week.

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2021-12-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

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