Puffins rub beaks, hares box, and roes run rings round one another. The many and intriguing rituals animals adopt to win at love is the subject of a new art exhibition showing online now.
Yorkshire wildlife artist Robert E Fuller studied the curious courtship rituals adopted by animals around the world for this latest exhibition, available to view on his website until February 28th.
The artist’s finely detailed paintings are accompanied by notes describing the animal love rituals that inspired them.
There are also stories, films and photographs from Robert Fuller’s extensive research as well as a live camera streaming from inside owl nests, where barn owls and tawny owls are courting now.
“The animal kingdom puts a lot of effort into the business of love,” he said. “Some of the rituals can seem quite strange or even comical to our eyes, but often there is a something very romantic in the gesture of, say, a kingfisher offering a gift of a fish to win over a female.”
Among the paintings on show is one of a pair of gannets observed ‘sky pointing’, a curious ritual in which these birds touch beaks and then point them in the air, inspired by watching these sea birds on the Yorkshire coast, and one featuring waved albatross dancing together, inspired by watching these birds in the Galapagos Islands.
To access the online exhibition, visit Robert Fuller’s website.
And to watch owls courting see Robert’s live video stream on YouTube.