A couple of weeks ago, thousands of painted ladies arrived in Lawrence. Millions more are on the way.

Don’t bother calling police. They’re not that kind of painted lady — they’re butterflies.

“This is the best painted-lady migration I’ve seen since the late 1970s. It’s huge,” said Chip Taylor, director of the Monarch Watch program and a professor of biological sciences at Kansas University.

One of the world’s most common butterflies, painted ladies are about half the size of the better-known monarch butterflies, which also are migrating south.

With their checkered wings upright, painted ladies are an ill-defined mix of brown, black, white and pink; when their wings unfold, they are orange with outer splotches of orange and black.

Instead of floating monarch-like through the air, painted ladies tend to flit.

“I’m starting to get phone calls about them,” Taylor said. “A lot of people are seeing them.”

Taylor said painted ladies didn’t do well in Kansas this year — “Too dry,” he said — but enjoyed near-record years in Minnesota and Iowa.

“The ones you’re seeing now are from up north,” Taylor said, “and from what my colleagues tell me, there’ll be millions more in the next couple weeks.”

While they’re here, he said, they’re “chasing each other, going from flower to flower, nectaring up.

“And then in a couple weeks, there’ll be a wind out of the north and they’ll be gone,” Taylor said. “So until then, enjoy them.”

Painted-lady butterflies gather nectar from some perennial verbena on Kansas University's west campus near Foley Hall. Chip Taylor, director of the Monarch Watch program and a professor of biological sciences at KU, says this year's painted-lady migration is the best he has seen in more than 20 years.

¢ 6News video: Butterflies tagged at annual Monarch Watch¢ Volunteers brave rain to tag wetlands’ monarchs (9-14-03)¢ Monarch Watch prepares for annual butterfly tag (9-05-03)¢ KU’s Monarch Watch