www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

It might be stretching things a bit to describe this one as an aberration, but take a close look at the red stripes on the upper wings. In each case a small white dot is evident, something I don't recall observing on a Red Admiral before.

None on any of my archives either. Perhaps we can call it an aber. tippingus

Fame at last!

David...

Now I don't want to draw anything into this, but I've looked through my archives and I've found 2 photos I've taken that show the same white spots on 2 separate individuals in separate years.... and they were both taken in Yorkshire. All of my other pics are from elsewhere and do not show the spots!

Spooky!

plus Peter's picture taken Oct '05 at Thatcham on the Red Admiral page also shows these spots!

maybe it's a way of distinguishing the gender?

Theres a RA picture in the latest BC magazine that also displays these spots.

Also if you look here http://www.eurobutterflies.com/species_ ... alanta.htm

The second photo down (from Switzerland) has tiny white spots.

Danny

I have to correct my last statement about not having any spotty variants in my archives. This was taken less than two weeks ago and hadn't been checked.

Seems they're common as muck! I must try to be more observant in future.

This thread seems to have dried up of late, but I wonder if the situation has been fully resolved. Since David's initial posting I have been carefully looking at RAs, but I've yet to see one with the white spot - for example, I saw 5 at the weekend and 6 this lunchtime, but none of them show it. Exactly how common is it? 1%? 10%? Are there regional or local variations in the frequency of occurance? Does it vary from year to year? Or through the year? Maybe some of the older books have the answers, but if not, perhaps the users of the forum could contribute to our scientific knowledge by doing a survey next year to come up with some answers. Perhaps Pete can set up some sort of web-form that can be used to enter sightings and displays the results as they come in

Simon C

I have been watching butterflies for years and always considered Red Admirals to be one of the most attractive butterflies but have to admit had never noticed the white spots before. So I looked at some photos I had taken this year and was surprised to see white spots on all of the ones taken locally (Derbyshire). However the ones taken in the south this year(Hampshire) had none.
Is it a North / South thing?

Given that Red Admiral are great wanderers, I'm 99.99% certain that this is nothing to do with geography

I personally think that this is one of those relatively-common phenomenon that occur, but that in this case does not have a specific name attached to it. Unlike the "caeruleopunctata" aberration of Small Copper, which is just as common

Cheers,

- Pete

I'm looking at a small booklet entitled 'The Red Admiral Butterfly', one of a series of ten produced by BC about ten years ago. Under a photograph of a red admiral is the following caption 'A minor variation which occurs quite commonly concerns the forewing red band. This is normally entire but may be divided into two almost equal parts by a narrow black bar running across it and aligned towards the wing tip. This specimen also has the extra white spot in the forewing band.' The booklet contains no further reference to the white spot.
On looking back through my red admiral pictures, I have some with the 'entire' red band, some with the 'broken' band, some with the white spot and some without the white spot!! There doesn't seem to be any logic to it!
Alex

What a gorgeous afternoon - with Painted Lady, Red Admiral and Peacock in the garden. Funnily enough, the Red Admiral had the very white dot mentioned in this thread:



... together with a Peacock with a tear under it's eye



All in all, a great time of year to perfect those photography skills

Cheers,

- Pete

Two stunning pictures - it's hard to believe that we're in the middle of October!
Alex

The sun took until around 3pm before it emerged around here. Yesterday was better though, and this RA was reasonably happy to be photographed. Note there are no white-in-red spots. I was very surprised at how good condition this specimen was. Yours looks pretty good too, Pete. Late as it is, could they still be emerging?

I think they probably could still be emerging. I was finding fairly small Red Admiral larvae only a few weeks ago.

Cheers,

- Pete