White Admiral feeding on a wasp

[zoothorn]

I had a call from a visitor to Broxbourne Woods on 1st July.. He reported seeing a White Admiral upside down in a bush with its proboscis in a dead wasp in a disused spiders web, so it would seem taking fluids from the dead insect, behaviour he and I have not come across before. The White Admiral subsequently flew off, so it was not caught in the web . Has anyone else seen a White Admiral or any other species taking fluids from a presumably rotting insect?

[Pawpawsaurus]

Has anyone else seen a White Admiral or any other species taking fluids from a presumably rotting insect?

I have, but that's only because I was at Broxbourne Wood on July 1st looking for Purple Emperors, and your correspondent pointed out the above to me.

Since then, I've been patiently waiting for him to upload a photo somewhere, but I've not seen one, so here's one of mine instead:



From a distance it seemed that the butterfly was trapped in a blackberry bush, struggling to escape the clutches of the wasp, but on closer inspection it was clear that the wasp was dead (presumably having been caught by the spider), and the butterfly was feeding on it. There weren't many threads of web left, and these two were swinging and twisting about in mid air.

It was a warm, dry day, and I would guess from the tatty state of the web that the wasp had been trapped a day or two earlier, yet the butterfly must have been finding some kind of moisture in its corpse, as it was busy feeding for some time.

I took numerous photos over a period of ten minutes or so, then I resumed my Emperor hunt. When I passed the bush on my way back later the butterfly had gone, but the wasp was still dangling there.

Thomas and Lewington say that White Admirals take "the dissolved salts in dung in the early hours of the morning". The above was observed just after 1pm.

As I'm in Hertfordshire, my sightings of White Admirals are quite few and far between, so I'm not at all sure whether this is frequent behaviour.

Thoughts from those more familiar with this species would be welcome.

Paul