The island is in the midst of an exotic invasion.

Beautiful Painted Lady butterflies arrived en masse last week, with seemingly every buddleia bush covered in them.

Ten of thousands of these migrant insects were reported from Langness on Friday.

Garry Curtis, chairman of Manx Butterfly Conservation, said: ’I first became aware of a possible large influx on the morning of Monday, July 29 when I saw about a hundred at the Ayres.

’Reports flooded in from all over the island. It seems almost every garden with nectar bearing plants had good numbers of Painted Ladies and reports of a hundred per garden were not uncommon.

’It was a real pleasure to hear from so many people who were enjoying this spectacle.’

The Painted Lady is a migrant butterfly which cannot survive a British winter.

It arrives in the Isle of Man in most years, sometimes in large numbers. The last major influx was in 2009.

During winter the butterfly exists in the Atlas mountains of Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa. As the year begins to warm they make their way north, colonising vegetated areas and laying eggs to produce a further generation.

Sometimes warm airflows can enable it to either fly straight here from northern Africa or to make it in just two generations. In the right conditions it can travel at 30mph and at heights of up to 3,000 ft.

This year has actually seen a number of influxes of Painted Ladies to the island which may have emanated from different generations.

Perhaps the most surprising element of their arrival last week was it followed two days of intense rain - a testament to the toughness of this species.

Gary said it is likely the number of Painted Ladies here is in the upper tens of thousands, or possibly hundreds of thousands.

In another development for the island lepidoptera, a new Manx species of butterfly has been recorded. A ringlet, widespread in England, was spotted at Ballaghennie in the Ayres last month.