www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Aware of much recent discussion regarding the dispersal of European species, which has been well documented on the forum I am looking for information.........

Is there any data available of species being recorded at Lightships or Lighthouses. I note some reference in the Aurelian Legacy but not specific to the species that I am most interested in. I am looking at long term data not just in recent years?

We have the standard migrating butterflies and moths, then we have the occasional migrating species and then we have the vagrants just like birds I suppose!

What species have been seen on the Continent's coastline that look like they are on a mission rather than just pottering around their local landscape.

And finally has anyone ever seen a Purple Emperor (Apatura iris) on the beach or shoreline either in the UK or abroad? You can see where I am going..............

Liz

I assume by the lack of responses no one on this forum is aware of any data or had any experiences as described?

Liz,
I have been a Dungeness regular for nearly 30 years and have spent many hours on the beach sea watching. In all that time I have never seen, or heard of a Purple Emperor being seen, on the beach or just inland of it. Most years we see many Red Admirals, Small Tortoiseshells and Clouded Yellows coming in but never a PE. One year a Camberwell Beauty was seen and there have been sightings of Large Tortoiseshells and Swallowtails, but never a PE.
Over the years many migrant Dragonfly species have been seen including Lesser Emperor, Vagrant Emperor, Red Veined Darter and Yellow Winged Darter amongst others. The Observatory Warden and support team are very hot on butterflies so I am confident that if PE had landed there it would have been recorded.
Maybe next year

Dave

Thank you Dave for that. Very helpful ~ any negative information from the North Sea coastline would also be interesting if anyone has any contacts on birding forums?

hi Liz
There's a bunch of lightship records in the New Naturalist volume "Insect Migration" (C. B. Williams 1958).
He also lists all* the species for which he had records of migration into the UK, and there's no PE in there.
But then he has no records of Silver-washed Frit - and yet two were seen flying in to Norfolk in 2010 at Sheringham. (Very close to where our PE turned up funny enough

But then, the last 20 years have seen unprecedented movements of new dragonfly species into the UK - (norfolk has added three new resident species of damselfly since 2000, with sightings of two more ) so it's not unreasonable to expect similar unexpected migrations of butterflies at some point. The Yellow-legged is probably the first of many

*Or at least he claims it's all but then refers in the text below to a species not on the list -sigh

Hi Liz,

In early August this year there was a good influx of butterflies on Jersey, including Silver-washed Fritillary, Map and a Purple Emperor. That's a minimum distance of c. 30 Km across water. Purple Emperor turns up on coastal Normandy with some regularity, and in atypical habitat, such as open grassland (T. Brereton pers. comm.). The invasion of Sweden by Purple Emperor in the early 1980s might have involved a flight across water. I'm sure they are doing this more often than we think; we probably only see the tip of the iceberg, or rather less than this, at more like 1%.

BWs, Neil

Maybe I have missed it but any news of continental Swallowtail second brood this year? Or has the hoped-for colonisation resulting from 2013 immigrants turned out to be a non-starter? Another possibility is that gorganus might be single brooded only in England. Experts?

Jack

Hi Jack,

I certainly don't count myself as an expert on gorganus, but we have seen a slightly disappointing show of second brood butterflies. Have a sufficient number of these second brood insects emerged and, more importantly, found mates? I suspect very few. We might see the odd one next spring, but my gut feeling is that the attempted 'invasion' is now petering out, as it has done historically after a couple of generations. False starts are to be expected, but the longer term picture is one of inevitable colonisation.

BWs, Neil