Small zooming Orange-tips

15 Tuesday Apr 2025

Tags

British butterflies, butterfly, male Orange-tip, Orange-tip

As I write this, a weather warning has just come into force, potentially bringing thunder, lightning and heavy rain from midday today until midday tomorrow. These warnings don’t always produce the forecast downpours but I feel for all the newly emerged small creatures, especially the delicate butterflies like this little Orange-tip. Of all the small Orange-tip males I’ve recently seen zooming along the hedgerows and banks of wildflowers, desperately seeking females, this one finally paused long enough to refuel, which allowed me to quickly snap a few photos. I hope he, and all his butterfly cousins, manage to find sufficient shelter to survive any deluges.

Sunday’s gift

17 Wednesday Apr 2024

Posted by sconzani in insects, spring

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Anthocharis cardamines, British butterflies, butterfly, Orange-tip, spring butterflies

I was trudging slowly along a muddy path, trying not to slip (it’s happened before), so I wasn’t paying attention when my first Orange-tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) of the year flitted up in front of me, disturbed from feeding on a flower of Herb Robert. Typically, it flew back along the way I had come, meaning I had to retrace my slippery steps while trying to keep an eye on where it landed once, twice, three times. By the time I got to the start of the path, the butterfly had disappeared and, though I lingered a while, it didn’t reappear.

240417 orange-tip

On my way home, I was more lucky and spotted my second Orange-tip of the year. I could easily have missed it, so well camouflaged was it amongst the lush new growth of Cow parsley plants, but the breeze had picked up and it was having to flap its wings just a little to hold on to its perch. The flash of its orange tips gave its location away.

Mr and Ms Orange-tip

23 Tuesday May 2023

Posted by sconzani in insects

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

British butterflies, butterfly, female Orange-tip, male Orange-tip, Orange-tip

It was early April when I saw my first male Orange-tip this year but, as usual with those early hatching males, it zipped past at the speed of flight, and it’s taken several weeks to get close enough to one that had paused, briefly, to refuel to get some half-way decent photos. And most males continue to zoom quickly past, searching – always searching for an available female to mate with.

230523 orange-tip (2)

The females are much more laid back – no need to spend their time and energy searching when the males will almost certainly find them. Instead, they feed and rest, and pose very nicely for any passing photographer who wants to appreciate their beauty.

230523 orange-tip (1)

Death in the meadow

30 Saturday Apr 2022

Posted by sconzani in insects, wildflowers

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

British butterflies, British spiders, butterfly, Crab spider, Crab spider kills Orange-tip, Cuckoo flower, Orange-tip, Orange-tip male, Orange-tip on Cuckoo flower

Sometimes I can be a bit slow. During today’s walk, I was ambling along the edge of a meadow when I spotted a male Orange-tip butterfly flitting from one small patch of Cuckoo flower to the next. Then it stopped at one spot longer than usual so I walked quickly over to get some photos. I could see its tongue was out so knew it was feeding but, still, I was amazed at how long it was staying put on the one flower. And then I saw why …

220430 orange tip and spider (1)

The poor butterfly had been grabbed by a lurking, very well camouflaged Crab spider.

220430 orange tip and spider (2)

Species Eight

16 Saturday Apr 2022

Posted by sconzani in insects

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

British butterflies, butterfly, female Orange-tip, Orange-tip

Our warm sunny Easter weekend weather is bringing out the butterflies again. During yesterday’s long walk I saw Speckled wood, Peacock, Holly Blue, Brimstone, Comma, Small white, and, my very first Orange-tips, my eighth species of the year, both males and this beautiful female.

220416 orange-tip

106/366 The ostentatious Orange-tip

15 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, spring

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Anthocharis cardamines, British butterflies, butterfly, Orange-tip, Orange-tip butterfly, spring butterflies

If there is one butterfly whose male makes a truly conspicuous effort to impress the female of the species, then it must surely be the Orange-tip (Anthocharis cardamines). Those vivid orange wing tips are hard to miss, even when the males are speeding past at a hundred miles an hour. Today, at last, I saw my first Orange-tip for 2020 – in fact, I spotted four of these handsome chaps and, after following a couple back and forth along their chosen territories, I finally managed a single photo of one as it was refuelling.

200415 orange-tip

Orange-tips

27 Sunday May 2018

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anthocharis cardamines, British butterflies, butterfly, Orange-tip, Orange-tip butterfly

The various white butterflies can be difficult to tell apart but the Orange-tips (Anthocharis cardamines) are a little easier to spot. The male sports the orange tips on its wings that give the species its common name and which are, according to the UK Butterflies website, caused by an accumulation of the mustard oils that were ingested when it was a caterpillar.

180527 Orange-tip male

The female Orange-tip doesn’t have those bright wing tips but she does share with the male the equally characteristic mottled green pattern on her underwings.

180527 Orange-tip female.jpg

The female lays a single egg – the caterpillars will devour other eggs and fellow caterpillars given the chance, hence the single egg – on one of the preferred larval food plants, their favourites being Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) and Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata). Eggs are white when first laid, changing to orange as they near maturity, a process that takes a week or two.

Newly laid white egg

Maturing orange egg

180527 Orange-tip egg (3)

I haven’t yet found a caterpillar but, in the next week or so, I will be re-checking the places where I found these eggs. If you want to read more about Orange-tips, you can check the Butterfly Conservation website here.