• ABOUT
  • BIRDING 2018
  • Birding 2019
  • BLOG POSTS
  • Butterflies 2018
  • Resources

earthstar

~ a celebration of nature

earthstar

Tag Archives: Orange-tip butterfly

Butterfly courtship

24 Monday May 2021

Posted by sconzani in insects

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brimstone butterfly, British butterflies, butterfly courtship, butterfly mating, Green-veined white butterfly, Orange-tip butterfly

Some recent moments of butterfly courtship I’ve managed to catch on camera …
The dance of the Brimstones: the butter-yellow male flies in to check if the paler female is ready and willing to mate. And he’s in luck, so their (to human eyes) romantic dance begins, with the male whirling around the female, wafting his pheromones in her direction to encourage her to settle and let mating begin. This ‘dance’ can continue quite a while, as I discovered while watching this pair.

210524 brimstone (1)
210524 brimstone (2)

Mating was already underway when I spotted this pair of Green-veined whites. And it is not just sperm that is passing between them. The Butterfly Conservation website reports that the male also transfers ‘a so-called “nuptial gift” of nutrients that the female can assimilate and use to increase egg production. Exceptionally, male Green-veined Whites may transfer 25% of their own body mass to females during mating, though typically this is more like 15%.’

210524 green-veined whites

Sometimes males don’t know when to take ‘No’ for an answer! By pointing her abdomen in the air, this Orange-tip female is refusing to mate, presumably because she has already mated and needs to get on with the important task of egg-laying. But the male simply wasn’t getting the message and continued fluttering around the female, even landing on her outspread wings. Eventually, she flew off at speed to escape his advances.

210524 orange-tip (1)
210524 orange-tip (2)
210524 orange-tip (3)
210524 orange-tip (4)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Butterfly as Cow parsley

01 Saturday May 2021

Posted by sconzani in insects, plants

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

British butterflies, Butterfly camouflage, Cow parsley, female Orange-tip, Orange-tip butterfly

I think you’ll agree this female Orange-tip butterfly has nailed this camouflage scenario.

210501 orange-tip (1)

She kept completely and utterly still, even when I got within a couple of inches of her for some macro photos. Amazing effort!

210501 orange-tip (2)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Two whites

14 Wednesday Apr 2021

Posted by sconzani in insects, spring

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

British butterflies, Green-veined white, Lavernock Nature Reserve, Orange-tip butterfly, Orange-tip male, spring butterflies

With the help of a little warm sunshine, Lavernock Nature Reserve came up trumps for me yesterday, as I found my first Orange-tip and Green-veined white butterflies for 2021, two of each. So beautiful, so lucky!

210414 orange-tip210414 green-veined white

Like this:

Like Loading...

126/366 The Lady of the Woods

05 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, spring

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

British butterflies, butterfly, Orange-tip 2nd instar, Orange-tip butterfly, Orange-tip egg

I know I already posted about seeing my first Orange-tip butterfly of the year (The ostentatious Orange-tip, 15 April) but, for those not familiar with this lovely springtime butterfly, I thought it might be useful to see a bit more detail. So, here is a typical male Orange-tip, from the top and the side. The speckling on the lower wings looks green but that’s an optical illusion – the colours are actually yellow and black.

200505 orange-tip male (1)
200505 orange-tip male (2)

And here’s a female from both angles. If you only see her from the top, you might confuse her with one of the other white butterflies, though the dark patches are different in all the whites, and the Orange-tip also has a distinctive wing shape.

200505 orange-tip female (1)
200505 orange-tip female (2)

I managed to find several eggs during a recent walk – the newly laid eggs are white but turn orange very quickly. You’ll find them on the caterpillar food plants: Cuckooflower, Garlic mustard and Honesty are three wildflowers this butterfly favours. And, for the first time ever, I found a caterpillar. This is a 2nd instar (i.e. stage) – the larvae proceed through 5 instars, progressively growing larger, until they are ready to pupate.

200505 orange-tip egg
200505 orange-tip larva 2nd instar

You might be wondering why I gave this post the title of ‘the Lady of the Woods’. Well, according to Peter Eeles’s superb publication Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies (every home should have one!), this is the name given to the Orange-tip by Benjamin Wilkes in his Twelve New Designs of English Butterflies, published in 1742.

Like this:

Like Loading...

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

Like this:

Like Loading...

100/365 Boy meets girl

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, flowers, insects, nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

#365DaysWild, British butterflies, Cuckooflower, Orange-tip butterfly, Orange-tip egg, Orange-tip female, Orange-tip male

A sequence of events that unfolded before me this afternoon….

190410 Orange-tip male

A male Orange-tip butterfly feeding on one of its favourite flowers, and the host plant for its caterpillars, the Cuckooflower.

190410 Orange-tip male and female (1)

Finished feeding on that flower, the male flies on and suddenly smells a female. Woohoo!

190410 Orange-tip male and female (2)

Sadly for him, this female has already mated, which is why she’s holding her body in that odd upright manner. He remains hopeful for a moment or two, then gets the message and flies off.

190410 Orange-tip female

I follow the female who flies to another flower. She’s not eating so what’s she’s doing, I wonder.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Aha! Can you spot the single egg attached to the flower stalk, in the very centre of the picture? I’ll have to go back in a week or so and see if I can spot any caterpillars on these flowers.

Like this:

Like Loading...

97/365 Fluttering along

07 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by sconzani in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature, spring

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Brimstone butterfly, British butterflies, butterfly, Grangemoor Park, Green-veined white butterfly, Orange-tip butterfly, Peacock butterfly

I took myself along to Grangemoor Park today, hoping its central hillock would block the cool north-easterly winds so that I might find some butterflies on the warmer, sheltered, river side … and I did. The three Orange-tips – all males – were my first of the year, as was the single Green-veined white (at least, I think it’s a Green-veined white – I do find the whites can be a little confusing).

190407 orange-tip190407 green-veined white

The four Peacocks were mostly too zippy to photograph, until I caught one enjoying the sunshine on a wooden railing. And the two Brimstones were also speeding along the edge of the pathways, until one stopped to refuel and I managed to grab a couple of snaps of it. I love butterflies!

190407 peacock190407 brimstone

Like this:

Like Loading...

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
Newly laid white egg
Maturing orange 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.

Like this:

Like Loading...

Cavorting at Cossie

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, spring

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Brimstone butterfly, British butterflies, butterflies, Comma, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Orange-tip butterfly, Peacock, Speckled wood

180503 Brimstone & Comma

I think it’s fair to say it’s not been much of a Spring so far, weather wise at least. It’s often been cool, frequently wet, and the sun has been elusive. I’m hoping Monday, the last day of April, was a hint of days to come – though there was a cool wind, the skies were mostly blue and it was warm in sheltered spots. Those conditions at Cosmeston persuaded the butterflies to come out to play, and I saw the highest numbers so far this year: 7 Brimstones, 2 Orange-tips, 2 Speckled woods, 2 Commas and 4 Peacocks. And it was such fun to be cavorting like a crazy woman again, flitting across fields and dancing along hedgerows to try to get photographs.

180503 Brimstone (2)180503 Comma180503 Orange-tip180503 Peacock180503 Speckled wood

Like this:

Like Loading...

Random creatures of Barry

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Barry, Crab spider, Dock bug, Garden snails, Glamorgan Botany Group, Grene shieldbug, hoverflies, insects, ladybirds, Orange-tip butterfly, slow-worm

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I spent a wonderful day on Saturday exploring and examining some of the town of Barry’s wilder green spaces with members of the Glamorgan Botany Group. But, of course, you can’t spend a whole day looking at plants without also seeing an awful lot of the critters that live on those plants and I admit to being a trifle distracted at times … by a sunshine-yellow Crab spider, by fluttering butterflies and buzzing hoverflies, by plentiful dock and shield bugs, by the sad sight of a dead Slow-worm. Some of the lovely old stone houses and churches we passed were pretty cool too!

170424 1 Creatures of Barry
170424 2 Creatures of Barry
170424 3 Creatures of Barry
170424 4 Creatures of Barry
170424 5 Creatures of Barry
170424 6 Old buildings of Barry
170424 7 Creatures of Barry
170424 8 Creatures of Barry
170424 9 Creatures of Barry
170424 10 Old buildings of Barry
170424 11 Creatures of Barry
170424 12 Creatures of Barry

Like this:

Like Loading...
← Older posts

About me

sconzani

sconzani

I'm a writer and photographer; researcher and blogger; birder and nature lover; countryside rambler and city strider; volunteer and biodiversity recorder.

View Full Profile →

Follow earthstar on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent blog posts

  • The chocolate butterfly July 5, 2022
  • Leafmines: Liriomyza eupatorii July 4, 2022
  • Oxeyes and friends July 3, 2022
  • Picture-winged flies on Burdock July 2, 2022
  • A darling darter July 1, 2022

From the archives

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

COPYRIGHT

Unless otherwise acknowledged, the text and photographs on this blog are my own and are subject to international copyright. Nothing may be downloaded or copied without my permission.

Click on the category

'Dedicated Naturalist' Project 365DaysWildin2019 amphibian animals autumn birds coastal fauna flowers fungi geology insects ladybird leaves lichen mammal molluscs nature nature photography parks plants reptiles seaside seasons spiders spring trees walks weather wildflowers winter

Fellow Earth Stars!

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • earthstar
    • Join 567 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • earthstar
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d bloggers like this: