www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I posted this in my own diary as part of the story of my August trip to the Dordogne in France. I apologise if placing it twice breaks rules but I wanted to share the video as I found the courtship behaviour interesting and very beautiful.

During the week I saw three different Graylings: Tree Grayling - Hipparchia statilinus, Great-banded Grayling - Brintesia circe and a lot of Woodland Grayling - Hipparchia fagi. Pictures of those and many others are in my diary Art Frames diary

On the last day I began to see this beautiful and elaborate courtship dance. I saw three pairs of Woodland Graylings doing it and so in addition to a few photos I shot some video which I encourage you to look at as it is so delicate and touching.


Pair of Woodland Graylings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0H2c7kc0Eo[/video]

I have tried to embed the video in this post but have failed every way I tried (it is in the videos section here but even that doesn't help me). If I find a way I'll edit this post

Thanks for posting that, Peter. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I've seen UK Graylings behave like this but have never witnessed fagi indulging in such behaviour, even though I've seen multi-hundreds over the years.

Seems like the same approach is used - the male attempts to 'dip' his androconial scales over the female's antennae.

Sadly, on this occasion, her level of wear and raising of the abdomen suggests another male found her first!

Very nice work, Peter! I wonder if this courtship is equivalent to semele - it would be good to see an actual pairing, but know how difficult it can be to capture that!

Art Frames wrote:I have tried to embed the video in this post but have failed every way I tried

I can't get the mechanism to work either - seems like a bug in the most recent update. Leave it with me

Cheers,

- Pete

Videos are now fixed and I've updated your post. Thanks for letting me know!

Cheers,

- Pete

Pete Eeles wrote:.......it would be good to see an actual pairing, but know how difficult it can be to capture that!

- Pete

Pete - many thanks for mending the links. I will investigate uploading more video from my files.

I did stand waiting for any pairing but I think, as has been mentioned by others she was displaying that she'd already mated so just enjoyed the attention.