| A romantic and delicate courtship... |
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This male of Leptidea sinapis spotted a female resting on Lotus sp and landed close to her (Franche-Comte, May 2010) Then he started a nice courtship, swinging its head on the right then on the left in front of this possible partner... |
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A careful observation of the scene revealed that the male was not only swinging its antennal clubs, but was also flinging its proboscis right and left... this was not really visible in live but was easy to see when scanning the set of pictures on the computer. This is particularly clear on the views just below... |
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The scene lasted for about 3 minutes, but the female did not seem to pay attention to the male which finally took off and flew away ... What a delicate way of courting albeit unsuccessful in that case ! |