Map of the Week: North African migrants invade UK
From the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, millions of North African butterflies are arriving in Britain - expected to be the largest migration of the Painted Lady species ever seen in the UK.
With warm, southerly winds over the bank holiday weekend, the extraordinary annual journey of these fragile looking insects suddenly hit Britain and experts think it may break all records.
"We have all been stunned at how quickly it has all happened. We were expecting them to arrive and suddenly with the good weather - Bang!", Dr Martin Warren from the charity Butterfly Conservation tells me.
"All the signs are that this will be the largest ever migration of Painted Ladies to the UK."
They have been spotted as far north as Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland and hundreds have been sighted in central London.
An estimated 18,000 were spotted flying past Scolt Head Island on the Norfolk coast on Monday, passing at 50-a-minute over a 400m front yesterday.
Source: Butterfly Conservation
A Spanish researcher had predicted that numbers could be unusually high.
Constanti Stefanescu reported seeing hundreds of thousands emerging in North Africa in mid February and beginning their long flight north.
They were seen in large numbers in Spain during April and a few weeks later in France.
It is thought that heavy winter rains in Morocco allowed good germination of the caterpillar food plants this year, but experts think that global warming explains increased sightings of the Painted Lady over the past few decades.
The butterflies, with a 3-inch wingspan, manage an average speed of around 30mph. They don't swarm like bees - butterflies tend to be solitary insects which may explain why there is no official collective noun for them.
Suggestions I have seen include flight, flutter, kaleidoscope, rabble and rainbow but perhaps, in honour of this year's invasion, readers might like to propose a suitable word.
The last really big migration to Northern Europe was in 1996 when Painted Ladies were spotted in the North of Scotland and even in Iceland and Greenland.
There is a mystery to be solved too. Apparently no-one has ever witnessed the return migration of the Painted Lady around September/October time.
We assume they do go back, British winters are too cold for them and their genes are said to be needed back in the Atlas mountains.
The returnees would be the children of the spring migrants - their parents, exhausted after their journey, will survive only a few months.
So the appeal goes out - Butterfly Conservation wants people to record their sightings now on the map AND remember to do the same in the autumn if they see these dogged migrants heading south.
The charity says that butterflies are important indicators of the health of an environment. "In profusion they show us that nature is in healthy balance".
Surprising, some might suggest, that so many were spotted in Westminster last weekend.
You can help them track the Painted Ladies here.
I'm 
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Wonderful eclectic article, as ever - thank you.
You ask for a collective noun for butterflies, and specifically for 'Painted Ladies'. From this and as they are floating daffodils, how about 'A Whorde' of butterflies? (Think of US troops on R&R in Vietnam, who referred to their ephemeral consorts of an evening as Iron Butterflies).
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Yes it's a wonder of nature that causes such migration. In Eastern Europe the huge migration of storks too is a sight to behold. Returning to their same nests and producing young oblivious of the roar of traffic below them. Tens of thousands do this year after year, wonderful indeed.
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Another colourful and interesting Article: All these Blogs could do with the variety of topics you manage to include Mr Easton.
Collective Names: With my mates relaxing here in north Scandinavia we came up with the following that were printable on a a BBC web page!
1) A FLATTERY of Butterflies because of all the fluttering beauty.
2) A BLUSH of Butterflies as in the literary reference to glimpse.
3) A PANOPLY of Butterflies from a splendid array.
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Common folks, Painted Ladies. What else but a Bordello of painted ladies.
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All the signs are that we will get another influx this weekend if the weather improves. Just had four fly past my window here in Great Yarmouth in the last ten minutes, despite the cloudy, overcast sky. If the sun shines we could have hordes. Last Monday we must have had 300,000 through Norfolk - amazing spectacle.
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Unfortunately the collective noun for butterflies should be a "cabinet". It is only when collectors display them that so many are usually seen together!
And are we to see the BNP out with their big nets to capture and repel this latest wave of immigration?
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A knob of butterflies.
cheers
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Painted ladies: its not just the UK. In Hungary and probably therefore most of central Europe, the number is this year is much higher than for any time in the last 6 years (I have only been living here for the last 6 years - so I can´t say anything about times previous to this).
Peter Symmons, North Hungary
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I've always thought that the word 'Flotilla' was a good collective noun for Butterflies.
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An "I can't believe it's not a flock" of butterflies ?
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A Spread?
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It has to be a Beauty of Butterflies!
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A masquerade of butterflies? That these fragile creatures can migrate so far at 30mph is truly astonishing.
If their return has not been witnessed, it may not be happening. That suggests that those that arrive here are doing so as an unfortunate accident, from their genes' point of view. Are they seen to return to Morocco from other parts of Europe?
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Our younger cat is very fond of butterflies preferably raw and on the hoof. So might I suggest an appropriate colletive noun is a `cat of butterflies'.
I just wish she would leave them alone.....
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What a nice story in amongst all the doom and gloom at the moment. In between MPs being less than honest and over zealous with their imaginative expense claims to the death knolls of our planet caused by Climate Change, it is nice to read a story to smile about.
I suppose there would be those that propose the invasion of the butterfly is detrimental to our environment, but I wouldn't know about any of that. These guys (the butterflies I mean) seem happy to go where the warmth is, and if they find it nice to come the the UK, considering how far North we are compared to Morocco, I'm happy to welcome them.
I'd suggest a 'flight' or 'squadron' of butterflies. If they are solitary most of the time, then they only congregate in migratory seasons so it seems appropriate.
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A churning of butterflies.
cheers
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Collecctive noun should be a "flutterby". It's the only one so far that makes sense, and is after all exactly what they do. It has the added advantage of not being any kind of pun on the word 'butter'.
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Graphis, I checked in to see if I had won the competition and noted your observation.
Unfortunately, it is clearly wrong, in that only 3 of the previous 16 comments had recommended a butter-pun name - 2 being mine, I hold my fingers up.
The rest had similarly sensible recommendations to yours.
What about a knobchurn of butterflies ?
cheers
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We live just South of Tours in the Loire Valley and have spotted two Painted Ladies in our garden this weekend.
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Butterflies make no discernible sound in flight but perhaps we could hear a multitude, and it would sound like a
Whisper of butterflies
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Flutter is definitely the word to use for a ollective of butterflies!
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I go for "flutter" too...
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Conflutteration anyone?
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I was in SW France during the week end May 2nd in the Dordogne Valley. Painted Ladies were passing through at a rate of about one every two to three minutes. The travelled due north and most were not beguiled by any of the flowers in the gardens and field but bounced onward at a good pace. At first I thought they were confined to the valley but two days later I saw the same thing in the adjacent hills so they may have been migrating on a wide front. I suggest a "bounce of butterflies" or a "passage of painted ladies" in honour of their annual feat of travel. You can see more insects on leport.blogspot.com
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A "hen night" of painted ladies?
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well, if a dragonfly can drink a flagon dry
then maybe butterflies should be "flutterbies"
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I want to tell you about a mass migration of Painted Ladies that I witnessed in September 2003 on the Island of Tenerife. Unfortunately they were flying from south to north of the island but for four or five days we experienced the sight of millions of them flying in this direction, they were flying in from sea level to the top most part of El Tiede. I asked an entomologist, Dr Jason Chapman from bbsrc.ac.uk about this migration, wasn't it in rather a strange direction, his thoughts were that they probably had been taken in the wrong direction, in other words out to sea, then changed their minds and came back over the island, I imagine eventually they would have been heading back to North Africa, surely not migrating again through southern Europe at that time of year. I am not exaggerating when I say there were millions of them as wherever we went on the island we saw them in huge quantities, I do have photographs to back up my sightings.
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Indeed an interesting article about butterflies.Oddly the word butterfly does not appear in the headline.In the light of the current political climate, and the rise of organisations such as the BNP , i find the title sensationalist and overly dramatic, not to mention irrelevant/ inaccurate and quite possibly irresponsible. There is no "invasion" by North African migrants as suggested.
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A Breeze of Butterflies?
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