Painted Lady Butterflies Adorn Vegas

Painting the town in Las Vegas are millions of painted ladies, and not the kind that people usually associate with Sin City.

Painted lady butterflies are flitting around southern Nevada on their migration north from Mexico and Arizona to the northern United States and southern Canada.

George Austin, of the Nevada State Museum in Las Vegas, said perhaps tens of millions of the butterflies are scouring the Mojave Desert for nectar and plants on which to lay their eggs.

He said a wet winter is contributing to a butterfly boom.

“It’s just after a good, wet winter when you see them,” said Austin, who is a lepidopterist, a person who studies butterflies.

Austin said the painted ladies arrived in mid-March and should be around for three or four more weeks in the area from Lake Mead on the Colorado River to Red Rock Canyon west of Las Vegas.

The painted lady is two or three times smaller and different in color than the monarch butterfly, which also migrates north for the summer. Monarch wings are burnt orange in color and framed by black lines or veins.

Painted lady wings are mottled gray, brown and black on the underside, with orange and roselike tops surrounding five speckles or black dots on the hind part of the wing. The black-tipped forewing has white spots.

Austin said painted ladies grow from egg to adult in about two or three weeks.

The cycle is repeated several times during the annual migration, meaning that the generation that summers in the northern area can be as much as five times removed from the one that left the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts in Mexico and Arizona.