The Sex Lives of Butterflies

Following on from my last blogpost about learning how the Bees get their pollen from the Lupin Flowers, I came across this scene of two butterflies trying to mate. Not that I'm a pervert or anything.

Butterflies fly extremely fast and all over the place. To get these images I had to put my camera on continuous burst mode. These shots aren't in the order they were taken, the male would fly in and out and in and out, and around, up down in a matter of milliseconds. However I put them in order to show a sequence only.

Incoming.....

The male is now 'presenting' himself to the female! I thought this was the other way around, but on googling it appears I was wrong. Isn't Google great! One can even learn about the sex lives of Butterflies there!

This is as near as they got mating for the day - thank goodness. Don't know whether I could have stood the heat!

They then flew off in a butterfly dance together and I walked on to leave them to it! According to Google, had I stuck around, I might have seen them in the act. I'll remember that for next time!

The Bees of the Wild Lupins - Part 3

One of the things I love about my macro lens is that it shows me things that I would not usually see. I knew bees landed on flowers, and collected pollen, and I never thought twice how it would do that on a Lupin Flower until I saw it through my Macro Lens. Let me show you want I learnt!

Firstly, The Lupin flower head is made up of lots of pods.  These pods are actually closed - imagine a petal in a shape of an oblong bubble. The stamen is inside each pod. The bee flies to the pod..

And then proceeds to start opening the pod

This could take a bit of time depending if its been opened or not before..

 He opens the pod quite wide...

I thought he'd get into the pod, but no, he then...

pulls the stamen out and collects the honey.  Note that this particularly bee is so laden down with pollen, that when he tries to fly he simply drops in a crash...

And leaves pollen dripping off the pod! 

I did catch him again doing another pod - never gave up and those pollen sacs must be heavy.

Here's another one that isn't laden down with pollen... He alights on the pod which is closed...

Opens it up to expose the stamen.

Exposes everything so he can access it... 

then pulls himself up to collect the pollen...

Pretty amazing isn't it? It's also nice to know that honey bees are still out in force in the wild. We don't want anything happening to our bees as they do one of natures most important jobs, pollinating plants to ensure we can eat.