High life

Today's reason to be cheerful has to be this news story I've just spotted on the BBC site. It turns out that the least likely explanation of the vanishing lady mystery turns out to be the correct one.

Painted lady (Photo: Alvesgaspar)

Painted lady butterflies come to Britain each summer from North Africa, sometimes in large numbers.
They bring a bit of colour to the summer and then, when come autumn comes, disappear. The two theories about what happens to them all are that they either head back to North Africa or that they simply die when the first frost arrives.
And the idea that something as fragile as a butterfly could do that journey twice does seem implausible. But now it turns out that they do, but they fly so high up that we can't see them from the ground. 
Butterflies at 1,000 metres up - I love it.