Painted ladies leaving their mark on cars
The migrating butterflies create a sticky mess when they meet their death on vehicle front ends.
By AMY TAXIN
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Saturday, April 2nd, 2005
Ron Daywalt had to pull off the freeway four times on his way down to Orange County from Bishop to scrape gooey bits of smashed butterflies off his windshield.
He wasn’t alone.
At gas stations up and down Southern California freeways, drivers are stopping to clean up the mess from one of the largest migrations of butterflies in recent years – a colorful outcrop of the year’s heavy rains.
“It’s a nightmare getting splattered by that many bugs, but the vegetation is beautiful out there,” said Daywalt, a nurse in Orange County, after dropping off his filthy black Toyota truck at Tustin Car Wash in Orange.
“I’ve never seen so many bugs in my whole life.”
Orange County has been flooded with painted ladies, orange-and-black butterflies that are blazing a path to the Northwest from the desert.
After this year’s record rainfall, lush desert plants have created a ripe host for caterpillars that turn into the butterflies that are dazzling nature-lovers across the county.
But they can be a nuisance to drivers.
Mary Truong said so many painted ladies splattered on her truck when she drove to Barstow this week, she lost count.
“It’s, like, ‘Oh my gosh, another one just died,'” said Truong, of Santa Ana. “I feel sad for them and think, ‘How come they don’t dodge us?’
“But we’re going so fast!”
Painted ladies, which only live about a month, migrate to ensure the survival of the next generation when they are so abundant, said butterfly expert David Marriott. He said tens of millions of the butterflies are now migrating across Southern California.
The butterfly mess could be a boon to carwash businesses hungry for sales after a rainy winter kept customers away.
George Cruz, manager at Nohl Ranch Car Wash in Orange, said sales fell 75 percent this winter from a year ago after the downpours forced him to close down several days in a row.
But so far, this spring’s splotchy mess hasn’t brought more customers – just dirtier cars. “Two weeks ago, I noticed a lot of cars come in all splotched with butterflies and bugs,” said Cruz, who has been in the carwash business for 15 years. “They’re just dirtier.”
Swarms of beauties
Painted ladies both distract and delight
By Terry Rodgers
STAFF WRITER
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE (California)
Friday, April 1st, 2005
Summerlike weather fostered a prolific hatch of desert butterflies yesterday, with gusting Santa Ana winds turning local skies into paisley landscapes. The swarms of painted lady butterflies – numbering in the millions – were a source of wonder and distraction for morning commuters, especially along the San Diego County coastline.
After the Rains, Tiny Rainbows
The storm-fed profusion of wildflowers means a riot of painted lady butterflies.
By Susannah Rosenblatt and Sara Lin, Times Staff Writers
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Friday, April 1st, 2005
Dave Goodward’s fifth-grade science class lined up across a sunny ball field in San Bernardino earlier this week, counting — and occasionally chasing — orange-speckled butterflies.
“I got one! I got one!” hollered one of his students from Kimbark Elementary School, adding another catch to his class’ unofficial butterfly census.
Painted lady butterflies are swarming Southern California, invading gardens and splattering windshields, thanks to the explosion of wildflowers in the local foothills and deserts, a main feeding and breeding ground for the creatures as they flutter up from Mexico.
“This could be the largest migration in history,” thanks to record-breaking rains and the desert blooms they produced, said UC Riverside entomologist Greg Ballmer.
There are millions, probably tens of millions this year, said David Marriott, director of the Monarch Program in Encinitas: “It’s a population explosion.”
The phenomenon occurs about twice every decade, Marriott said, as the painted ladies flit in a steady stream along the Southern California coast and through the deserts and mountain passes toward the Pacific Northwest. The swarms usually disperse once they reach Santa Barbara, although some butterflies will reach Oregon and even Canada.
The orange, black and white-spotted creatures fly roughly 15 to 20 mph, said Julian P. Donahue, former curator of lepidoptera at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and assistant secretary of the Lepidopterists’ Society. They feed on nectar from thistles and other plants along the way — if scrub jays or speeding Escalades don’t get them first.
Ron Vanderhoff, nursery manager at Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach, said the grounds have played host to many butterflies this week.
“There’s lots of flowers here for them to stop and take a snack as they continue flying,” he said.
For people walking through a park or zooming down the freeway, the 2-inch-wide insects are hard to miss, especially when funneling through mountain passes.
The butterflies are a common sight in the heavily traveled Cajon Pass, where Interstate 15 snakes into the desert, but have not caused any traffic problems, said Tony Nguyen, a San Bernardino-based Highway Patrol officer.”Driving down the highway, it was just hard not to hit them,” said Michael Hearst, spokesman for the Orange County Vector Control District. “I had one guy complaining because butterflies were all over the radiator of his car.”
Unlike monarch butterflies, which are larger and fly higher, painted ladies cruise at eye level, making them easy to spot but hard to dodge.
When meeting a violent end, the butterflies leave a yellow splatter from the stored fat they use to fly long distances. The pockets of fat are filled with Vitamin A, which gives the goo its yellow color, Ballmer said.
Driving along canyon roads through Aliso Viejo over the weekend, Micare Filipcik, 27, of Mission Viejo couldn’t miss the swarm.
“It was a huge flock of butterflies — like you see birds,” she said. “It was beautiful.”
And if it seems the painted ladies are using state highways as a guide on their northward journey, Marriott said it’s hardly a coincidence.
“Roadways that run north-south were constructed in valleys, and butterflies will go through canyons and valleys,” he said. “That’s why you’ll see them on roads.”
The butterfly migration has helped double the number of visitors to the Louis Rubidoux Nature Center and Wildlife Conservation Area on the Santa Ana River in Riverside.”We have droves of them coming through,” said park interpreter Sherrie Chandler of the painted ladies. “I’ve been here for five years, this is the most I’ve ever seen.”
The influx of winged visitors inspired Chandler to bring back Butterfly Day to the nature center May 7, where people can stand in a tent full of just-released butterflies and feed them watermelon by hand.
Painted ladies, scientifically known as Vanessa cardui, are a common butterfly found all over the world. They migrate from Mexico annually, but are most numerous in years with heavy rains, Ballmer said.
“Years where there is an abundance of host plants, they have a strong ability to increase in numbers,” said Ring Cardé, chairman of the UC Riverside entomology department.The insect lives about three weeks as a caterpillar and chrysalis, and about three more as a butterfly, traveling hundreds of miles and laying eggs along the way before its fragile wings give out — or birds or lizards snap it up.
The painted lady is among roughly 165 species of butterfly native to Southern California, Ballmer said.
Experts predict another wave of painted ladies in about a month, as females lay eggs on their journey north.
The painted ladies started passing through in January, and will keep on trucking for about another month. They’ll come until wildflowers such as the fiddleneck and lupine, which the larvae eat, are dried and gone, Ballmer said.
So Goodward realized he had to hurry if he wanted his elementary science students to commune with the painted ladies on their international commute before they disappear.
“There was a whole bunch, and one sat in my hand,” said fifth-grader Cristina Rodarte, 11. “They’re pretty.”
She counted four passing butterflies Wednesday afternoon.
Watch the Painted Ladies Flutter by
By Diane Bell
A painted lady butterfly sat on a plant in Borrego Springs. It’s been raining butterflies. The painted ladies were out en masse this week, especially in our coastal areas. The plentiful rainfall and lush plant growth are luring the mottled orange and brown butterflies with black and white wing markings west and north from the inland deserts and Mexico toward greener pastures. Huge migrations happen only once or twice a decade when the conditions are just right, says David Marriott, a butterfly specialist with the local Monarch Program.
Painted ladies (a bit of a misnomer, considering many are males) are similar in color, but smaller and more mottled than monarchs. Unlike monarchs, they don’t hang out together, although they appear to be moving in a huge swarm because of their sheer numbers. Marriott says painted ladies fly about 30 mph and can cover more than 100 miles in a day in their travels up the coast toward Oregon and Washington. They fly much closer to the ground than monarchs, staying 3 to 10 feet above terra firma, to the dread of motorists and the delight of the car wash industry.
While millions of butterflies passed through San Diego on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and yesterday, this migration was maybe one-fourth the size of the one four years ago and in 1992, two banner butterfly years, Marriott says. In 2001, the phone at Monarch Program’s headquarters rang every 5 to 10 minutes with the query, “What’s going on?” Drivers honked and pointed to the flitting creatures.
Normally, predators ensure that only about two of a female butterfly’s 400 eggs make it to the adult stage, Marriott explains. But this is still early in the season, before their primary predators are on the prowl.
“If the rain continues, about a month from now we could have a really big explosion,” he predicts. That’s because the painted ladies are laying eggs as they pass through. It takes about a month for the offspring to mature.
Painted Lady Butterflies Migrate through North County
By: YVETTE URREA – Staff Writer
North County Times (San Diego, California)
Sunday, March 27, 2005
NORTH COUNTY —- The spring forecast must have called for butterfly flurries Saturday. The orange, brown, black and white butterflies, known as Painted Ladies, fluttered along the coastal areas heading north from Baja to the deserts, said butterfly expert David Marriott, who runs the Monarch Program in Encinitas.
“It’s a population explosion,” Marriott said. “It happens two times in a decade.”
Charles Kyle, 48, of Oceanside, who works at Armstrong Garden Centers at The Flower Fields, said he spotted the butterflies Saturday as he drove to work in Carlsbad.
“Hundreds and hundreds of them,” Kyle said. “They were like falling ash, flittering and fluttering in front of your windshield. It was hard to keep your eyes on the road.
“They made a beeline for the flower fields,” he said. “Once they went over the fields and saw the color, I suspect some of them stopped by for a larger visit.”
Carlsbad lifeguard Mark Allen said he was on a cliff looking down and saw a swarm of them flying just 50 yards in from the water on the beach.
“It was kind of wild,” Allen said. “I just thought it was interesting, and I’ve never seen that many.”
Farther south, Del Mar lifeguard supervisor Patrick Vergne said the butterflies were up on the bluffs, as he jogged and other people walked on the trails.
“They all came at once,” Vergne said.
Rainfall followed by warm temperatures triggers the migration, Marriott said. The rainfall causes their host plants —- where butterflies deposit their eggs —- to thrive and that results in more butterfly eggs being deposited. Also, earlier in the year, there are fewer butterfly predators which allow their numbers to increase.
A butterfly lays a single egg on a host plant. The egg develops into a larva that feeds off the plant. Painted Lady butterflies like to use cheeseweed, thistle, lupine, stinging nettle, and mallow as host plants. “As they’re moving, they’re laying eggs (along the way),” Marriott said.
He predicted residents could see another flurry of butterflies in mid- to late-April if the weather stays warm enough.
Marriott said the deserts have lots of flowers now that provide nectar for the butterflies and more host plants.
The Painted Lady can travel up to 40 mph and cover hundreds of miles in a single day. Experts say that they appear to traveling in swarms, but they actually travel as individuals.
The butterflies have similar coloring as monarch butterflies, but they are smaller and flap their wings continually when they fly.
Painted ladies’ dash of color
Migrating butterflies’ numbers thrill county residents over the weekend.
By MARLA JO FISHER
The Orange County Register
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Painted ladies put on a spectacular show Saturday as clouds of the migrating butterflies thrilled people from Brea to Mission Viejo.
“We’re just sitting in our front yard, seeing huge clusters of them,” said Michelle Pulasky as she sat in a lawn chair at her house in Orange.
The butterflies are smaller than monarchs, but look somewhat similar, with black-and-orange wings.
Such large clusters typically happen only once or twice each decade, butterfly expert David Marriott said. They were taking advantage of a warm, sunny day to migrate northwest from the deserts to Oregon. Butterflies need warmth and sunshine to fly. Painted ladies, which only live about a month, can fly up to 100 miles per day.
This year’s rainfall has produced a rare population explosion, Marriott said, because the moisture has spurred growth of the plants that play host to the colorful creatures.
He predicted that today’s display will be even grander if it’s sunny. A month from now, more should appear, from the eggs that they are laying now.
The heaviest concentrations were reported Saturday in Mission Viejo, Lake Forest, Orange and Brea.
The butterflies travel northwest until they reach the ocean, then head north to wetter, greener lands in the Pacific Northwest.
“It seems like there must have been thousands,” said Nanette Weltman of Brea. “I can’t stop looking at them.”
Butterfly alert
Diane Bell
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Phones continued to ring all weekend at the offices of the monarch butterfly monitoring program. Calls reporting an invasion of painted lady butterflies came from throughout San Diego County and as far north as Ventura County, reports David Marriott. And it’s just the beginning. Based on a colleague’s report of numerous healthy painted lady caterpillars in the desert, Marriott is confident in his prediction: “In three weeks we should really have mass numbers of painted lady butterflies.”