Red Admiral

Here's a Red Admiral butterfly I met in late spring.

As I suggested in an earlier post, a better name for them might be an Orange Admirable. (They were almost certainly named before we defined orange as a separate color from red, and "admiral" is probably a corruption of the term "admirable".)

I've occasionally seen these butterflies together, but most of the time I see the lone Red Admiral. At least the males are considered pretty territorial, so seeing only one male in an area probably makes sense.

This is a butterfly that will sometimes land on people. I suspect that they're males looking to drink up some sweat; this is another version of mud-puddling behavior.

June 10, 2021 at Duke Farms
Photo 136368803, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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