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Admiral

 

 

The migrants arrive in Estonia from the South, we can meet the imagos in unexpected places due to their migrant mode of life and they usually arrive in May or June.

 

The migrants arrived to the northern coast in June: LINK

 

In a lucky case they find themselves a partner who has already arrived. The female butterfly then lays her eggs on the leaves of the common nettle or the small nettle (according to literature also on other plants) in the fashion of the nymphalidae butterflies. The female fastens each egg on its own and they may be around a hundred. In a week the caterpillar hatches, and for three weeks it is only busy with eating. After that it wraps itself into a leaf and becomes a pupa.

 

We can see the mature butterfies that have grown locally from late July to September (in north-western Estonia they were seen last Sunday).

 

What more happens? The migrants turn back towards the South in order to reach South Eusope or North Africa for wintering. In the subsequent winter and spring quite a number of new imago generations develop there.

 

In Central Europe  the distance that an admiral manages to cover per hour has been investigated. The answer was that a little above 10 kilometres per hour in daylight time, thus they are not particularly fast fliers. But they are still remarkable migrants.