Flutter-by: Painted Lady migration

Hundreds of thousands of Painted Lady butterflies are making their way from their northern summer home to their winter quarters and Colorado is right in their path.

I noticed on Monday at that there were a lot of butterflies in the back yard and hanging around my flower pots. Not that the pickings at the flower pots are all that attractive due to a huge hail storm that came through and pulverized everything leafy. It didn’t seem to matter, apparently butterflies aren’t too picky.

I sat today and in a 15-minute period I counted 35 butterflies. They came over the north fence and flickered up towards the flower pots. A few stopped by the blue pool for a drink. Each of their courses were identical. Not a single Wrong-Way-Feldman in the group.

I’ve never seen this amount of butterflies go by and it’s caused by rainy spring weather. My question is where was the rainy spring weather? These butter-flutters didn’t seem to be locals.

I have no idea where they ‘summer’ but I know their destination is due south in Mexico. That is as long as they avoid being smashed on the front of cars. The guy who came to clean the woodstove mentioned he had to scrape his windshield off this morning because the winged-wobblers threw themselves in front of his truck. I winced at that.

Butterflies are whimsical and romantic. That is unless you have Lepidopterophobia and can’t stand the little beasts. One local station interviewed a woman about her phobia. They interviewed her while she was sitting in her car with the windows rolled up because she was too afraid to step out and possibly encounter a winged menace just waiting to pounce. I laughed and just then she said it wasn’t funny so I figured I should change the channel.

It was nice to have the butterflies come through because my hummingbirds have bugged out and are long gone. I’ve left one feeder up just in case and I did see one butterfly take a quick stop but that’s the only visitor to the drive-by feeder in the last few days.

There’s a winter storm coming in a few days and I’ll take the feeder down then. I figure most of my summer visitors have fluttered away.