King of the glade

"This glade is mine! All ladies are mine! Get out you bastard"

Had opportunity to watch two Mourning Cloaks/Camberwell Beauty's/ Suruvaippaa having a territorial fight.
It's worth looking LARGE
It all happened in air. They were tireless flyers, so quick I couldn't even focus on them. They keep getting over treetops spinning around each others.
I lost track of time, but I'm sure I watched them almost an hour . Whole time this other challenger keep coming back. And their wild dance started again.

I studied them afterwards from comp, and learnt female is a slightly bigger sized. So I'm pretty sure this spectacular show was territorial argument rather than mating. Butterflies were exact same size (abut 5 cm wide wings open). Here you can see it wings open.

Rather nice day, warm and sunny. Tomorrow is Mothers day.
Have nice Saturday lovely ones!