Beetle courtship

A return visit to Eye Green to survey a field that had been omitted from the first site map we'd been given. We walked along the Cat's Water, which forms the eastern boundary of the site, and at last there were a reasonable number of insects around, after a remarkably poor showing earlier in the spring.

I came across these courting Common Malachite beetles - during courtship the male antennae are held forward to attract a female which will approach and consume the pheromone secretions prior to mating. This behaviour is usually protracted and may continue for up to an hour but will not always lead to mating and it is thought that pre-mated females continue to visit males.