As I was exploring at Huntley Meadows Park this past weekend, I was thrilled to stumble upon this beautiful Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui), a species that I have not seen in several years. In the field, I couldn’t remember the differences between a Painted Lady and the similar-looking American Lady. Fortunately, there are plenty of resources on-line, including this helpful comparison page on bugguide.net that shows the differences between the two types. On the basis of the pattern of the eye spots, I concluded that this is almost certainly a Painted Lady.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
Great composition. It’s hard to tell where she ends and the flower begins.
Thanks, Dan. That was the only Painted Lady I saw all day, so I was happy to be able to get some shots.
Thanks for the link Mike. I’ve been seeing a lot of these here.
Interestingly far fewer this year in the UK where we usually get significant migrant numbers up from Southern Spain. I think we saw one on holiday in Devon… would expect to see dozens normally.
Presumably the wind hasn’t quite done it’s thing, or they hit a cycle of breeding blip in Spain so couldn’t have got here if they wanted to.