In its own realm

[Prajwal J Ullal]

ID: Spot swordtails, mating

An interesting sighting during the trail, a particular patch of the trail had several spot swordtails flying around, on close observation we could spot this pair of mating spot swordtails. Though we came across an interesting behaviour where the other Spot swordtails would try to interfere with this mating pair, these would flutter around the mating pair forcing in their abdomen, but would fly off within a short time. Unfortunately we couldnt frame this behaviour and rather could capture just the mating pair.

EXIF:
Canon 550D
Canon 100mm macro
F/9
Shutterspeed 1/160
ISO 400
Handheld, External flash fired

Location: Nagla trail, Sanjay Gandhi National park extension, Mumbai, India

[Disha Parchani]

Beautiful close-up shot!

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice natural history behavior captured. Loved the colours and patterns on the wings. Good details. I know you prefer not to use ISO above 400, but you could have tried increasing it slightly, to use a narrower aperture so that you could have got depth of field to cover the head area of the below one. Thanks for sharing.

[Prajwal J Ullal]

Hopefully should be able to do it henceforth, as my gear has been upgraded