Dark Green Fritillary mating

Upper-wings of two Dark Green Fritillary

Cloudy, brightening mid-morning with a light south to south east wind, veering to south westerly. There had been rain overnight and water droplets were points of light in juniper bushes alive with small pale butterflies and moths.   Common blue, meadow brown and tortoiseshell and we glimpsed fritillary but they were lively and elusive. 
​I know a butterfly hotspot,  sheltered by larch and a stone wall that is itself a sculpture, with through-stones  and limestone like millefeuille pastry- stone of compacted layers.   At the base of the wall bright white bedstraw and purple thyme and soft mosses cushion the rock.  

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​Scattered over the grass  hawkbit and hawkbeard, yellow flowers and downy seed-heads,  each achene with a parachute awaiting wind-dispersal. 
Fresh bramble  flowers should attract butterflies once they release nectar.  The Dark  Green Fritillary and the Small Pearl- bordered Fritillary have a micro-habitat here  in the fringe of bracken  where the females lay their eggs to overwinter on tough stems, under leaves.   The Dark Green Fritillary larvae feed on  the Common Dog violet  and the warmth and shelter within the tangle of bracken and bramble  is nurturing.  Flowers of Yarrow, Achillea millefolium- for its feathery leaves. Dropwort and wood sage on limestone clitter.  

​Dark Green Fritillary flit about us, none settles.  Until we almost step on a pair mating down in a weave of grass, settled for who knows how long.  It is the summer solstice and they take advantage of the sunlight which illuminates them fitfully and the long hours of daylight. Their abdomens conjoin as their legs straddle upon a scaffolding  of grass.    At first their wings are almost closed to show the pale pattern of the under-wing with glimpses of tawny orange and black of the upper-wing.  I am on my knees in reverence to the wonder of butterflies,  circling them imperceptibly slowly,  seeing their wings flutter and open like the corolla of an exotic flower.  The male’s body pulses, hers is receptive.  On my knees to see deep into the grass that screens them.  A rough and tumble as he drags her through the grasses, or she drags him, wings fluttering until they fly off still conjoined in copulation.
 A lovely morning and everything coalesced here with the Dark Green Fritillary.  I spend hours studying photographs, cropping them to show detail.  On some images the best way to fathom the anatomy of the butterflies is to find two gold-tipped antennae for each, then trace the disposition of head and legs, and of those eight wings.
 

Not the first time this spring and summer I've thought I was watching a single butterfly, to realise I had a mating pair. It was the same with the tiny dingy skipper, where I find four antennae and more legs than will attribute to one insect.  Some have a habit of mating deep in grasses that conceal them and as mating can be long and leisurely they must hide or they become highly vulnerable to predators.  Seeding grasses are the butterfly's habitat and habit, here they mate.  

You can see the millefeuille limestone effect in the central stones at the base of the wall. I love the different character that local geology gives to a wall structure. Sandstone walls look very different. 
We found a hole in a wall and, it being the summer solstice, we could have played out the Pyramus and Thisbe scene from a Middsummer Night's Dream, an apt motif for lockdown.