Monday, July 13, 2015

so much testoterone but not enough females, yet

An enlighted landowner manages his big wood in Bucks for iris. It is  wall to wall Sallow along the rides. I only had one hour on saturday morning, from 10 until 11. Once before, two years ago, I had a similar experience: 31 sightings, at least 20 individuals, all males. The extraordinary thing was that they were all behaving identically: very rapid flights in and around the Sallows, keeping very close to the vegetation, sometimes in the Ashes behind; no landing whatsoever. Because there were so many, inevitably they clashed, but not for long, because they needed to get back to looking for the ladies tout de suite.

1 comment:

Matthew Oates said...

This is 'sallow searching': randy males seeking freshly emerged females in the sallow thickets...