Hey friends! I’ve got a new Butterfly tale to share with you, as over the last couple of months I’ve been raising a troupe of super friendly common garden butterflies.

Red Admirals (Vanessa atalanta) are a quick flying regular migrant to these shores and beginning each Spring flocks of Red ads travel northwards from North Africa and mainland Europe. The females that arrive here lay their eggs on common ol’ stinging nettle and from July onwards we have these lovelies to look at…although they overwinter here as well, and I saw them in the area from as early as February.

I love these butterflies they are so pretty and always happy to pose for photos if I’m quiet enough. This year I was lucky enough to find a few little batches of eggs on some of the purpose grown nettles in the garden and I fostered just a small amount of them (literally just a single leaf) and moved them into my butterfly house. Before digging them up a fresh nettle to live on.

Which is a bit weird when I think about it now.

Anyway, there were 14 of them and these little guys were so small (and seemed to be small for ages) that my camera could only just about see them.

I’m totally fascinated with caterpillars, Red ad cats are fairly beige when tiny but can be either black with a light green stripe or much more green (and alien looking) I genuinely thought it was a different type of caterpillar to begin with!

Just to point out my butterfly raising disclaimer, I’m only rescuing the ones I can identify as eggs as some caterpillars can be tricky to raise or are protected species. If I don’t trust that I can look after them properly and give them the right food plant/proper environment then my plan is to just leave them alone. 

As with the Painted ladies I reared last year these guys are so laid back and easy to look after, especially if you keep them on a potted plant.

I’ve mentioned in some of my other posts how caterpillars form an upside down question mark when they begin to form their chrysalis but kinda think I should change that to a fish hook, its a process that takes about a day. This was the first one to create its chrysalis and the others just carried on around it.

Something I found to be quite amazing was that by having this many of them you could hear them eating the plant (which by this time was the 5th one they mowed down)!!

All 14 of them went on to fully finish the caterpillar stage of their lifecycle and it was about a week before they began to colour up. I love it when you can see the wings through the shell as it means the butterfly will emerge within 24 hours.

I actually was able to see a couple of them emerge, its over so quickly I didn’t get a chance to get any photos but I did get this shot of one just after it emerged.

Apparently their favourite foods are buddleias, flowering ivy and rotting fruit although they seemed to like freshly sliced orange as well and even though my butterfly house is filled with cut flowers the orange is always more popular.

Fun fact – did you know that butterflies taste through their feet!

My general plan is to always release them three or so days after they emerge, although in this case it was actually a week due to the rain we’ve had. Although keeping them a few days longer did mean that something super exciting happened and they laid eggs!! So even after releasing all 14 of them I’ve still had a chance to care for more of them – which should overwinter in my butterfly house.

I like to think that my butterfly enclosure kept them happy enough to replicate their natural behaviour.

Red ads are one of my most favourite butterflies, they really have wonderful wing patterns and thankfully weren’t in a rush to fly away – the verbena is always popular with the bugs, so I got a chance to get some nice photos of them.

Even though its been so wet this year, its been a particularly good one for Red ads and Large whites (I’m currently raising 19 of them on a cabbage!).

By caring for, and releasing these lovely ladies (and gents) out into my Wildspace has increased my home-raised butterfly total to 136!! (Since I moved into my new house!).

I really hope you enjoyed this little slice of fluttery goodness! I feel super privileged to have been able to raise and protect these chaps and the eggs. As always thank you so much for reading this post and have a great weekend!