clouded arrival

Yesterday was a dreary wet day so I read the morning newspaper more thoroughly than usual. In it, Simon Barnes, sports writer and naturalist, wrote an article (link) in which he described the pleasure  of watching birds and butterflies with his young son, Eddie, who happens to have Downs.They are holidaying somewhere on the coast further west in Cornwall. He reported seeing several clouded yellows, an occasional migrant from Southern Europe, and not for the first time I felt quite envious of him. Lo and behold we saw several today on our walk, the first I have ever seen locally. They are very skittish and almost always fold up their wings at rest, which is a pity because the black edged pattern on the upper surface of the wings is quite striking.

There were also a lot of common (but not so common) blues around.

butterfly heaven

the meadows were teeming with butterflies again today including this handsome painted lady, the first one I have seen this year.

white hot

Not the most popular sight, I guess, large white female (butterfly that is!) preparing to mate with male. She has two dark spots on upper surface of fore wing, he only has two paler spots on lower surface. Both have prominent black tips to wings. There is a ragged comma in the background.

one white one, one black one

earlier in the year we reported the arrival of two new ducks, Jemima and Chloe, to join Francis and Elizabeth (see duck label). Sadly this did not go well because the drake behaved very aggressively to the two smaller ducklings. Eventually they had to be rescued, and after a short sojourn in a neighbour's garden they were given to a farm park at New Mills (see link), at the end of the Launceston Steam Railway line (see previous page). They have settled in well and seem to believe that they are Shetland ducks. Photo by Jo Edwards, thank you!

volunteer food

Slightly blurred through the safety fence, the lioness is looking forward to tea.

At DZP 2 (link)

Burning bright at Dartmoor Zoological Park (DZP)

A few of the animals to be seen at the DZP, at Sparkwell near Plymouth (link), the story of which was told in the film  "We bought a zoo". Keeping animals in captivity, especially large animals like tigers, is always questionable but this is a small, friendly, slightly unkempt zoo with seemingly very content animals and warm friendly staff.  The amur tigers are under extreme pressure in the wild from loss of habitat, and use of their powdered bones and other parts in Chinese so called medicines. The tiger is eating meat from Dartmoor ponies culled during the autumn round ups. They are magnificent beasts and to see them so close up in an open enclosure is breathtaking. This is a fun day out at a very reasonable cost and it has a good spacious restaurant.