Thanks Goldie, I know what you mean about stocking up on butterfly images to help get through Winter! I try to cram in as many Small Copper photos as I can!
It was glorious at Dungeness today : unbroken warm sunshine and dead calm. I was delighted to see that the fourth brood of Small Coppers is now beginning to emerge
Contrast the third brood Copper on the left with the fresh male on the right
He was the only fresh male that I saw today, all of the other fourth brood members were female (and that's something which may be of interest when I tell you about something else that happened later on in my visit)
In all I counted 78 Small Coppers
I also saw a very pale Copper that looked white to the eye but which you can see had a faint orange hue
I was lucky to come across a mating pair: a fairly tatty third brood male ( getting on for 21 days old I'd guess ) and a pristine female fourth brood that almost certainly had emerged today. They were being harassed by a male
This interloper was clearly younger (judging by his condition ) than the male that had successfully mated. I wonder if the emergence of female Coppers is timed to occur towards the end of the previous brood and thus ensure that it will be the genes of the stronger males (which have survived the longest) that will be passed on?
The interloper made a through nuisance of himself, repeatedly attempting to mate with the already coupled female
When the mated pair eventually parted, the interloper pursued the deflowered female and as I hope you can see from these blurry photos, she immediately reacted to him by going into the "Turkey Strut"
I found the pair after they had coupled but the time that elapsed from that point to when they parted was 24 minutes. Of that time they were harassed by the younger male for 22 minutes!
Mated females are the constant subject of attention. It must be very energy consuming! Here's another female dealing with a male
Look at her posture
No wonder I find the behaviour of these wonderful butterflies so fascinating!