Cornish Nature

During the depths winter, on cold & stormy days, one of things we like to do to blow away the cobwebs is to spend an hour or so walking along the beach at nearby Praa Sands. Praa Sands is situated on the south coast of West Cornwall, 5.5 km east of Marazion, it’s beautiful golden sand running for a mile along the rim of Mounts Bay. Very popular with holiday makers in the summer, the wide open spaces are much quieter during the winter.

 The pay & display car park at the western end of the beach, (one of two - be careful here the wheel clampers are always out in force), is bounded by a row of numerous large white cylindrical rock like structures.

Wildlife On the Edge 

The Hard Rock Gallery at Geevor Tin Mine

An exhibition of photographs by David Chapman & Steve Jones celebrating the bio-diversity of the mining landscape of Geevor.

Geevor, set on the cliff tops of the rugged Atlantic coast of Penwith in West Cornwall, was one of the last working tin mines in the county. In the mid 1980’s the price of tin collapsed to half the amount needed to break even, with the inevitable result that by 1990 the mine closed. In May 1991 the main pumps keeping the mine dry were switched off and the shafts slowly flooded up to sea level.

The Small Pincertail is a relatively common & widespread species in the Iberian Peninsula, though apparently absent from the west coast regions of Portugal & the north coast regions of Spain.
There are three subspecies of Onychogomphus forcipatus with Onychogomphus forcipatus unguiculatus being the one that occurs throughout the Iberian Peninsula. It is a predominantly black & yellow, medium size dragonfly, with blue eyes in the Mediterranean area, (though greenish eyes further north in Europe). It is very similar in appearance to the Large Pincertail - Onychogomphus uncatus and the two species cannot be reliably separated by colour markings alone.

The Red Fox - Vulpes vulpes is one of our commonest native mammals however in the countryside of Cornwall views of this handsome animal are usually confined to fleeting glimpses of a lone adult crossing a distant field, the odd individual illuminated by car headlights, or perhaps, sadly, the unfortunate roadside casualties that pepper our main roads. So on the 1st day of July it was a real privilege to share the late evening sunshine with three young fox cubs near the village of Townshend.

The fox cubs were perhaps born in March/April and weaned by May/June, and were now enjoying a little independence away from the den.

Tucked away on the Cornwall/Devon border, the tiny village of Luckett nestles at the bottom of a very long hill that drops from the heights of Kit Hill down to the depths of the River Tamar. This beautiful little spot on the frontier of the Cornish mainland is part of the Tamar Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

A 10 minute stroll from the village car park heading southeast leads you to Greenscoombe Wood, home to one of Cornwall’s, and indeed Britian’s, rarest butterflies, the Heath Fritillary – Mellicta athalia. Here on the east facing slopes of the wooded valleys conservationists have worked hard to create clearings with the right vegetation mix to enable the Heath Fritillary to survive in the county.

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.