Black wings with a scarlet band across each forewing and white spots at the tip, flying fast down a sunlit hedge
Red admiral — the boldest black-and-red butterfly in Britain.
Nature · Insects & other invertebrates
Red admiral
Seen in almost every month; most numerous August–October · wingspan 64–78 mm
Vanessa atalanta — Nymphalidae
A big, fast, black butterfly slashed with scarlet and spotted with white at the wingtips. It is chiefly a migrant, arriving in Britain each spring from North Africa and southern Europe and breeding here through the summer, though milder winters mean more and more now survive as hibernating adults. In autumn it is the butterfly on the ivy blossom and the windfall apples, often still flying in November.
How to spot them
- ▸Black wings crossed by a scarlet-orange band on each forewing and a scarlet border to each hindwing
- ▸White spots in the black forewing tip; blue scaling at the hindwing corner
- ▸Underside marbled dark brown and grey with a pink-red forewing bar — cryptic, quite unlike the upperside
- ▸Powerful, dashing flight; males hold a sunlit territory and chase off rivals
- ▸Late-season feeder on ivy flowers, rotting apples and sap runs; can be on the wing into November
How to know it
A migrant arriving from North Africa and the Mediterranean each spring, now increasingly surviving British winters as an adult
Red admiral, whose overwintering success in Britain has risen with milder winters.
Its caterpillar lives alone inside a nettle leaf drawn shut with silk into a tent
Red admiral — one larva per folded leaf, unlike the communal webs of peacock and small tortoiseshell.
Still on the wing in November, feeding on ivy blossom and windfall apples
Red admiral, with the peacock the last butterfly of the British year.
Its English name is usually explained as a corruption of an older word meaning 'admirable'
Red admiral: eighteenth-century writers called it the red admirable.
Its specific epithet is the name of the swift-footed huntress who lost a race over three golden apples
Red admiral — Vanessa atalanta, after Atalanta.
Quick-fire facts
- •Vanessa atalanta; the genus Vanessa also holds the painted lady, Vanessa cardui
- •Larval foodplants are common nettle and small nettle, occasionally pellitory-of-the-wall and hop
- •Butterfly Conservation describes it as a migrant whose numbers vary greatly year to year, with occasional huge influxes
- •Adults now hibernate in Britain in increasing numbers; successful overwintering was rare before the 1990s
- •Strong enough to cross the Alps; southward return movements have been recorded in autumn
- •The genus name Vanessa was coined by the Danish entomologist Johan Christian Fabricius, apparently taken from Swift's poem Cadenus and Vanessa
- •Unlike most butterflies it readily feeds on fermenting fruit and tree sap as well as nectar
- •It is far darker than the painted lady: the red admiral's ground colour is black, the painted lady's a pale salmon-orange
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Sources
- Butterfly Conservation — Red Admiral
- Paul D. Brock — Britain's Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland