Anyone with even the remotest interest in the natural history of Cornwall can’t have failed to notice the huge influx of Painted Lady Butterflies – Cynthia cardui sweeping across our peninsula. It is one of the biggest events of it’s kind that the county has witnessed in over a decade.
During the second week of April 2009 I was staying in the Sierra Grazalema Natural Park, Andalucia, Spain, where hundreds of Painted Ladies (plus a handful of Clouded Yellows – Colias croceus) could be seen nectaring and presumably laying eggs everywhere we went.
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10km southwest of Ronda, (as the Griffon Vulture flies), near the eastern edge of the Sierra Grazalema Natural Park in Andalucia lies the Llanos de Libar, an area of karst at the head of a limestone valley. Amongst other things it is a great area for reptiles and amphibians, so with that in mind we headed for the village at the gateway to the Llanos de Libar, Montejaque.
On the 30th May 2008 during a trip to Windmill Farm on the Lizard peninsula I did my usual circuit of all the dragonfly hotspots within the reserve, including the bunded northern scrapes. These bunds may not be the most attractive of features to have around a pool but they are a clever use of the material which had been excavated in order to create the pools in the first place, in that they make an effective windbreak around the entire water body.
