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Re: It Happens (Red Admiral outbreak in NYC)
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Dr Johnson: fascinating. And the perfect moment for you to settle for
evermore whether Nabokov¹s preference for Red Admirable was his personal
teasing wordplay or based on some genuine etymological distortion?
Its coloring is quite splendid and I liked it very much in my youth. Great
numbers of them migrated from Africa to Northern Russia, where it was called
³The Butterfly of Doom² because it was especially abundant in 1881, the year
Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, and the markings on the underside of its
two hind wings seem to read ³1881.² The Red Admirable¹s ability to travel so
far is matched by many other migratory butterflies.
(VN, Strong Opinions, 169-70).
Worth noting that the supposed fatidic wing markings were 1881. Any year in
the range 1881-1924 could be plausibly assigned to the Russian Revolution¹
(from autocracy to dictatorship!). But non-statisticians in thrall to
coincidences must curse the fact that the wings missed THE key, prophetic
year, 1917!
Stan Kelly-Bootle, MAA, AMS
Lord Derby Mathematics Prize, 1944.
On 05/05/2012 01:08, "Kurt Johnson" <kurtjohnsonisd@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
> This is Dr. Kurt Johnson, co-author of Nabokov's Blues, retired lepidopterist
> from the American Museum of Natural History. You all know the details better
> than me but the question came up a few years ago on VNF about whether
> population explosions of the Red Admiral Butterfly (Vanessa atalanta) actually
> occur. In Nabokov-lore, the numeral-like underwing pattern of this species
> and the reported occurrence of such an outbreak in Russia supposedly had some
> fateful parallel with the dates of the Russian revolution. I remember at the
> time of that VNF query, that it was hard to find anything in the
> lepidopterological literature to check whether this kind of thing happens.
> Well, in the last two days we have had an outbreak of Red Admirals in NYC the
> likes of which I have never seen (not even close) and I've been here 45 years.
>
> I live across from Prospect Park and the Botanical Garden in Brooklyn and,
> today, even walking down the streets, like 6 blocks, to the business district
> there were at least a half dozen Red Admirals for every 10 paces one walked.
> And this remained true for several blocks until I turned around. I then came
> back to the Botanical Garden and Red Admirals were also flying all over the
> place in the garden, chasing each other etc. By comparison the only other
> butterflies around were a Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) or two and a Comma
> Butterfly (Polygonia comma) or two. It will be interesting to see how long
> this explosion lasts, AND I will make sure to record it is this year's
> Lepidopterists Society-published Season's Summary so there is documentation
> for the future.
>
> A couple notes: re this: I have seen outbreaks like this with butterflies in
> the tropics. Perhaps the most notable one was an outbreak of the VERY RARE
> swallowtail Eurytides zonarius in the desert areas along the Pedernales border
> area with Haiti and the Domincan Republic in the 1990's. This is a butterfly
> you seldom see (very rare in collections) and on one day there there were
> thousands "mud-puddling" after a long desert rain the day before. I mention
> that because in NYC this year, it has been the warmest March (don't know about
> April yet) on record and on top of this warmth we then had 3 luscious days of
> heavy rain but not accompanied by wind. This might have initiated the
> breakout. Considering that, to my knowledge, spring Red Admiral adults (this
> would be first-brood adults) would have to come from crysalids that
> overwintered from last year. The outbreak cause might well be that the warm
> spring, and then this latest rain, caused far larger number of crysalids to
> survive and hatch as opposed to simply die off. One would have to account for
> why there are so many of them in this year's spring brood if nothing last year
> seemed unusual.
>
> Well, I thought this note might be useful re: the Nabokov lore about that
> report of incidents of Red Admiral breakouts in Russia at the time of the
> revolution. I was surprised today; never seen anything like it.
>
> best!
> Dr. Kurt Johnson
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evermore whether Nabokov¹s preference for Red Admirable was his personal
teasing wordplay or based on some genuine etymological distortion?
Its coloring is quite splendid and I liked it very much in my youth. Great
numbers of them migrated from Africa to Northern Russia, where it was called
³The Butterfly of Doom² because it was especially abundant in 1881, the year
Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, and the markings on the underside of its
two hind wings seem to read ³1881.² The Red Admirable¹s ability to travel so
far is matched by many other migratory butterflies.
(VN, Strong Opinions, 169-70).
Worth noting that the supposed fatidic wing markings were 1881. Any year in
the range 1881-1924 could be plausibly assigned to the Russian Revolution¹
(from autocracy to dictatorship!). But non-statisticians in thrall to
coincidences must curse the fact that the wings missed THE key, prophetic
year, 1917!
Stan Kelly-Bootle, MAA, AMS
Lord Derby Mathematics Prize, 1944.
On 05/05/2012 01:08, "Kurt Johnson" <kurtjohnsonisd@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
> This is Dr. Kurt Johnson, co-author of Nabokov's Blues, retired lepidopterist
> from the American Museum of Natural History. You all know the details better
> than me but the question came up a few years ago on VNF about whether
> population explosions of the Red Admiral Butterfly (Vanessa atalanta) actually
> occur. In Nabokov-lore, the numeral-like underwing pattern of this species
> and the reported occurrence of such an outbreak in Russia supposedly had some
> fateful parallel with the dates of the Russian revolution. I remember at the
> time of that VNF query, that it was hard to find anything in the
> lepidopterological literature to check whether this kind of thing happens.
> Well, in the last two days we have had an outbreak of Red Admirals in NYC the
> likes of which I have never seen (not even close) and I've been here 45 years.
>
> I live across from Prospect Park and the Botanical Garden in Brooklyn and,
> today, even walking down the streets, like 6 blocks, to the business district
> there were at least a half dozen Red Admirals for every 10 paces one walked.
> And this remained true for several blocks until I turned around. I then came
> back to the Botanical Garden and Red Admirals were also flying all over the
> place in the garden, chasing each other etc. By comparison the only other
> butterflies around were a Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) or two and a Comma
> Butterfly (Polygonia comma) or two. It will be interesting to see how long
> this explosion lasts, AND I will make sure to record it is this year's
> Lepidopterists Society-published Season's Summary so there is documentation
> for the future.
>
> A couple notes: re this: I have seen outbreaks like this with butterflies in
> the tropics. Perhaps the most notable one was an outbreak of the VERY RARE
> swallowtail Eurytides zonarius in the desert areas along the Pedernales border
> area with Haiti and the Domincan Republic in the 1990's. This is a butterfly
> you seldom see (very rare in collections) and on one day there there were
> thousands "mud-puddling" after a long desert rain the day before. I mention
> that because in NYC this year, it has been the warmest March (don't know about
> April yet) on record and on top of this warmth we then had 3 luscious days of
> heavy rain but not accompanied by wind. This might have initiated the
> breakout. Considering that, to my knowledge, spring Red Admiral adults (this
> would be first-brood adults) would have to come from crysalids that
> overwintered from last year. The outbreak cause might well be that the warm
> spring, and then this latest rain, caused far larger number of crysalids to
> survive and hatch as opposed to simply die off. One would have to account for
> why there are so many of them in this year's spring brood if nothing last year
> seemed unusual.
>
> Well, I thought this note might be useful re: the Nabokov lore about that
> report of incidents of Red Admiral breakouts in Russia at the time of the
> revolution. I was surprised today; never seen anything like it.
>
> best!
> Dr. Kurt Johnson
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/