Red Admiral
Vanessa atalanta · Butterflies
Red Admiral on honeysuckle
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 26 July 2025
A Red Admiral on a honeysuckle vine in the July border, proboscis threaded deep into one tubular flower while five or six others crowd round it. Red Admirals are on both sides of the Atlantic and look the same on each; in Brooklyn they arrive from the south each spring and breed on nettles, the same as they do in Kent.
Honeysuckle is built for moths, which is why it smells strongest at dusk, but the tubes are short enough for a butterfly by day. The admiral is a migrant that cannot survive a northern winter, so every one in a New York garden has come up from the Carolinas or further.
Red Admiral on wild mint
Slovenian Alps, 1 September 2023
A Red Admiral on a roadside patch of wild mint high in the Julian Alps at the start of September. Red Admirals migrate north into Europe from the Mediterranean each year rather than overwintering there, breeding on nettles wherever they land, and one this high in the mountains in early autumn is most likely already heading back south.
The name is a corruption of "admirable", which was what the eighteenth century called it, and the red bands are the same on both sides of the Atlantic. This is the one butterfly a British visitor to Brooklyn will recognise on sight.
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