The May monsoon endowed plants with a Made-In-China verisimilitude:

Knee-scratching thistles are now several metres high, and Karik and Valya could have told you all about the monstrous dragonflies:
In the spot where just a moment or two ago there had lain a tiny dragonfly, there now moved a thick, long, log-like, jointed body with a huge [...]

Huge numbers yesterday on this walk, on some very quiet meadows at between 400 and 600m. First Gonepteryx rhamni, our Brimstone:

Next is I think a Clouded Yellow, Colias croceus:

Then Papilio machaon, macaón in Spanish, Common swallowtail and a host of other names in English. We saw a couple of dozen:

A swallowtail story from The child’s [...]

The British Sardine Racing association (popups) is “dedicated to breeding a better Sardine, revolutionising training methods, and the breeding of both pedigree fish, and Hybrids, such as the Sardine/Shark crossbreed.”
The Living Age (1919): “… eagerly bending over a long, narrow tank on the floor. They were racing sardines, taking them out of a tin [...]

Wood ants descending rapidly en masse from a Quercus ilex on Montseny at the onset of a sharp shower:

Having spent several decades standing under trees waiting for the rain to stop, it is my firm belief that small ants do not flee from the rain as do big ones, although their level of activity [...]

George Sandford has left a fascinating comment on this post, which deals with an amusing 19th century literary-historical hoax–purported correspondence between Ferdinand the Catholic and an esoteric global selection of fellow-monarchs.
George is family of the alleged editor, Brother Antonio the Goth, and thus of the Christian clan kidnapped by the Moors when they invaded [...]

Samir over at View from Fez says that around 100 kids die annually from scorpion bites in Morocco. They’re quite common in Spain too. Here’s one in the gardens of Can Ferrero in Barcelona’s Zona Franca district that scared the hell out of me:

Lucanus cervus (Ciervo volante) on the hills above San Juan de Plan in the Pyrenees of Huesca:

Proyecto Ciervo Volante writes:
Flight abilities seem, in principle, well developed. Fight speed reaches 6 km/h (D’Ami, 1981) but dispersal abilities are unknown. There are XIX century tales about mass movements (Darwin, 1871; Lacroix, 1968; Paulian & Baraud, 1982). [...]

Mona:

(I once met a Tangier man who claimed to own a Barbary ape called Lisa, but let’s not go there, or here either.)
Copywriters have moved on since Darwin was alleged to have said, “It’s the best, science says so and I’m not lying”:

I use the sweet version of Anis del Mono in pastry cooking. Drinking [...]

Two elderly ladies have just met for the first time and are sounding each other out:
A: My dog is so intelligent it stands by the door and woofs whenever it wants to go out and have a poo.
B: My cat is so intelligent it comes in at five o’clock in the morning and jumps on [...]

I suspect their algorithm is rather crude, and the seasons are rather vague along the Barcelona coast, but these are meant to emerge in spring (typically late January here), not late November. “The pine processionary caterpillar is a pest whose northward spread in France is being fostered by climate change. INRA researchers in Orleans are [...]

Leoncio Urabayen (La tierra humanizada, 1949) says that the dung beetle (escarabajo pelotero) is to a hive of bees as the pyramids are to the Empire State. This is unfair:

“The American Institute of Biological Sciences reports that dung beetles save the United States cattle industry an estimated US$380 million annually through burying above-ground livestock [...]

Rollover. (Glowworm is freaky, WWWWontserrat accurate.)

Laura Gibbs is posting, translating and commenting Latin fables. Today’s is rather good: “The Birds were in a terrible Fright once, for fear of Gun-shot from the Beetles. And what was the Bus’ness, but the little Balls of Ordure, that the Beetles had rak’d together, the Birds took for Bullets.” Read the rest.

Some species sit still and others don’t. Lizards tend to the latter, usually only letting you close on them if they are petrified or ill. This one appears to be neither, and remained reasonably calm even when I almost fell off my log onto its.

Front elevation:

Plan view:

These butterflies are incredibly lazy, and there are lots of them. Something wrong there.

El Niño de Tetuán singing fandangos (MP3s or him and a superb selection of others). We’re probably talking early 1930s, but I don’t know where–Seville or Jerez seems more likely than Tetuan :-):
A esa liebre no tirarle
cazaores de la sierra
a esa liebra no tirarle
porque está haciendo en la tierra
madriguera pa ser madre
y es sagrao lo [...]

Máximo Puente (I don’t think that’s a pseudonym–think “ain’t no mountain high enough”) also swims in it every day, says Mariano Gistaín.

Sorry but it’s the only photo of Sarkozy I could find this morning. And who says a spider won’t rule France one day? This sounds like a chimpanzees’ charter.

Dezelfde lui die zaten te zeiken over mijn muzikale smaak zijn weer bezig. Nu zou het onverantwoord zijn om ’s nachts door tarantulagebied te wandelen met 15 Zweedse studentes. Wat een onzin.
1) In zijn 1976 proefschrift, Dodendans: arachnia, Eurodisco en bierdrinken, werd door F Vollenbroek overtuigend getoond dat 93,4% van volwassen tarantula’s behoorlijk tot zeer [...]